In our life journey, one of the most crucial aspects is establishing a unique identity.
Your identity is the essence of who you are, encompassing your values, beliefs, passions, and aspirations. There are so many characteristics that create the person you are, your strengths, your temperament, your upbringing, your environment, your values, the language you speak, and the love language you respond to, so many factors make you who you are! I feel identity goes beyond this, it mirrors your spirit. It's the key to unlocking your true potential and promoting your mental well-being.
The value YOU bring to our life – is priceless! There’s only ONE YOU!
Factors to consider when establishing identity:
1. Embrace Self-Acceptance:
Begin by accepting yourself unconditionally, embracing both your strengths and imperfections. Understand that you are a work in progress, constantly evolving and growing. Embracing self-acceptance allows you to cultivate a positive relationship with yourself, fostering a sense of self-worth and inner peace.
2. Discover Your Passions:
Explore your interests and engage in activities that ignite your passion and give you fun! Whether it's painting, dancing, writing, photography, or any other form of self-expression, discovering and pursuing your passions provides a sense of purpose and fulfilment. It allows you to connect with your authentic self, enabling you to thrive mentally and emotionally. While discovering this you also find out what you like and dislike, and other values. They exist from our experiences and while we live life.
3️. Define Your Values:
Clarify your core values—the principles that guide your decisions and actions. Identify what truly matters to you and align your life with these values. We view the world, people and our life through lenses of our values. Living in congruence with your values promotes a sense of authenticity and empowers you to make choices that resonate with your inner truth. Keep true to your authenticity, since people-pleasing while you don’t resonate with it, devalues who you are. Values and principles continually develop as we live and apply life, and changing how we feel about something because of knowledge and wisdom, is part of self-improvement and shaping identity.
4. Cultivate Healthy Boundaries:
Establishing healthy boundaries is crucial for your mental well-being. Learn to communicate and express your needs and feelings effectively and set limits in relationships, events and various areas of life. Respect your boundaries and honour those of others. This fosters healthy connections, reduces stress, and promotes a balanced sense of self. When you respect yourself, others will too.
5. Apply Life Balance:
The Life Enrichment Matrix© is a broad model utilised by JustLive Coaching and Counselling as a platform for creating Life Balance. The purpose of this model is to enrich a person’s life with information, ideas, theories, research, and a broad suitcase of knowledge to contribute to an individual’s self-development and improvement. This is crucial to developing a sound identity, with healthy boundaries and living to your full potential. We offer a Life Balance Life Coaching course where we visit various dimensions which encourage people to Just Live! https://www.justlive.co.za/life-enrichment. Email us to receive the Life Enrichment’s Matrix©.
You don’t have to fall into the rut of the rat race of life and work yourself into a stupor. You don’t have to conform to the rest of the world and its ideals, and superficial customs. It is important that you balance your life on all four dimensions, you will still get everything done and will build relationships and a good reputation. After all, you need to be well-balanced, temperate, and sober of mind. You also need to be happy and glad-hearted continually and always.
Rephrasing from Dorothy Carnegie’s book, Psychologist Robert W. White, reprimands the societal idea of “it is a person’s job to adjust himself to the forces around him.” And he reflects on the demise of this type of negative thinking where “the person who all-too-successfully adjusts to narrowing channels, monotonous routines, imposed restrictions, and the pressure to fulfil roles, a course of action that can succeed only at the costs of his power to object, to grow, to improve the roles, to invent, to act as a constructive force-in short, to have any creative front in his development.” What he is emphasising here is that – few of us have the courage to stand alone or the clarity of purpose, to know what we stand for. Our behaviour is largely dictated by our social and economic group and environment. We should not adjust ourselves to the forces around us, but live intentionally, fulfilling our vision and living with purpose!
You don’t have to be a people pleaser or conform to the social environment, you can stand alone on your opinion, what you decide or who you feel you are in this life. Being comfortable in your own skin and liking yourself, is essential to sound identity. “When this social environment conflicts with our own individual personality, we often become neurotic and miserable. We feel lost and bewildered; we don’t like ourselves.” Dorothy Carnegie.
6. Embrace Self-Care:
Prioritize self-care by applying practices that nourish your mind, body, and soul. Engage in activities that rejuvenate you, such as meditation, exercise, spending time in nature, or indulging in a hobby. Self-care enhances your overall well-being, boosts self-esteem, and strengthens your identity.
7. The Psychology of Identity:
Often people develop role confusion and identity crises because they haven’t developed the moral excellence or virtue of fidelity, which is the faithfulness and loyalty you acquire as an adolescent (Erikson, 1950). This develops as you search for yourself and ask questions such as “Who am I?”; “Who can I be?”; “Am I comfortable with who I am?”; “Am I part of the community, accepted?” And as your significant relationships such as peers and your role models develop, during the ages of 12-19 years, it creates a perspective in your capability of social relationships and how you treat people such as being loyal and faithful, and through these interactions you create an image of yourself. Erikson’s perspective on the stage of development in people’s lives is clear as one stage of development influences the next stage. For example, in the preceding stage, if you do not develop the virtue of being competent and feel “I can make it in the world of people and things” you develop inferiority. Developing inferiority and low self-esteem as a foundation when you are 6-11 years, influences how you see yourself, your capabilities, what you will become, your temperament, maturity and so many other factors - and influences developing a sound identity.
What must I do?
--> Change your thinking pattern positively:
Improving the way you feel about yourself starts with your thinking pattern, especially your self-talk. Self-talk often turns out to be more than one person speaking in your head, and this becomes a tug of war. Self-talk is the instigator of feelings and emotions. Start by making positive declarations and believing them, practise self-acceptance, dream, be kind to yourself, and allow love and compliments into your life, think positively about yourself so that your thoughts will develop as a pattern and you will start liking yourself. Increasing your self-love will create positive thoughts of self-acceptance and increase your self-worth. Confidence is key!
What mustn’t I do?
Don’t focus on weaknesses and who you are not:
When you focus on your weaknesses and who you are not, and keep on worrying and struggling to be whom others want you to be, or how they think the world “thinks” you should look, you develop anxiety and tension, because you have to create a facade and you build up stress inside because you are not being true to yourself. It’s like a baby bird hatching and can’t wait to burst out of the shell!
Don’t compare or compete:
“Comparing and competing” takes you back many steps in maturity and self-development, see the quote in “Run hard at self-improvement and growth” hereunder.
Being a true image of who you are, is a challenge in this increasingly competing world of social media and artificial intelligence. It is just what it says, “artificial” and an unnecessary competition and loss of energy because you are a real person with marrow and bone, who is created with body, soul, and spirit – you are uniquely Created by God, a Masterpiece in His image (Ephesians 2:10). You are not made to compete with yourself.
Developing an unstable identity causes a 'restlessness' within, never being able to experience true joy and authenticity. When people have an endless search for identity, they waste time! They hurt other people around them, especially in family structures. There’s always a discontented feeling inside a person, and nothing internally or externally can saturate this hunger for affirmation, acceptance and fulfilment, and there’s never true joy. These conditions generally expressed by society as identity crises and mid-life crises, are merely acting out of unestablished identities.
--> Run hard at self-improvement and growth:
It's imperative that you like yourself! It is important to be comfortable with who you are - that you accept and like your body, your voice, and your personality.
The hardcore truth is, recreating an identity and fidelity, starts by ‘growing up.’
In her book “Don’t Grow Old – Grow Up!” Dorothy Carnegie emphasises in
“Learn to Like Yourself:”
“A mature person does not lie awake at night comparing himself unfavourably to others, worrying because he does not have the confidence of Bill Smith or the aggressiveness and push of Jim Jones. He may criticize his own performance at times, he may be aware of his faults and deficiencies, but he approves of his own basic aims and motivations and he tends to spend his energies improving his weak spots rather than merely deploring them. He has the same healthy toleration for himself that he tries to have for others; and he can live with himself without anguish.”
Establishing your identity is an ongoing process. It requires self-reflection, exploration, adaptation, and much courage. Courage to step out of your comfort zone, but also the courage to break down and rebuild good things. Developing a strong, sustaining faith and relationship with God contributes to mental and emotional health, strengthening your identity!
Embrace the uniqueness that lies within you and celebrate your individuality. Your identity is a powerful force that can positively impact your mental health and enable you to lead a fulfilling life.
I can write more, and more, about this subject since many people are lost in their identity, but I would much rather chat with you and share more exciting self-improvement possibilities. You can book a free session with me on the website at:
If you would like to journey with me in developing your self-potential and self-worth contact me for more information about our customised courses.
Elvira
Life Coach
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” George Bernard Shaw