Self-improvement doesn’t work if we don’t understand who we are

You can change your habits and the things you do over and over again, but it's never going to feel like enough until you tackle your identity.

I grew up around a multitude of motivational quotes taped to my bathroom mirror and the kitchen fridge: A winner is just a loser who tried one more time; Grit is living life like it’s a marathon; Success is not final and failure is not fatal. I grew up in a household where I truly believed that I could do anything that I set my mind to, and I still hold on to this sense of confidence that my parents instilled in me.

However, as I grew up, there were obstacles that I attempted to jump over and repeatedly was caught by the tip of my shoe, the brush of my knee, or the wobble of the hurdle. It was like no matter how hard I conformed my mind to what I wanted to do and no matter how long I spent berating myself, nothing worked.

When I wanted to conform my body into what society deemed as acceptable, I tried all the things: dieting, running, HIIT, intermittent fasting, etc. Some of those things worked. I was able to clear some of those hurdles, but it didn’t feel like enough.

When I wanted to do well at school, I was able to change my study habits – making practice tests, tutoring other people, going to office hours. These are tried and true tactics that put me where I wanted to be in school, but even still, some tests came back worse than expected no matter what I did. The grades started to feel simultaneously meaningless and meaningful. This wasn’t enough.

When I wanted to experience true community in high school, I turned my natural sociability to the max, and I became best friends with everybody. Doesn’t everyone like the person who is best friends with everyone? I code-switched between my intellect to my adventurousness to my humor depending on the group of people I was around and what would make the biggest impression on them. And I wouldn’t say that all of those different facets – intellect, adventurousness, and humor – aren’t truly part of me, but it was like performing behind a mask where I was doing all of the right things and was numb on the inside.

Our society likes to move fast. That is a fact.

Our society wants us to get from point A to point B, and it doesn’t care how you do it. It just cares that you do it. The destination could be your professional career or having a family or being some type of wellness guru. The point is that you have to get to your destination as fast as possible, and that usually means following the checklist items of “success”.

I checked all the boxes for my body, my academics, my relationships, and when I reached the bottom of the checklist, the ink in my pen trailed off in confused scribbles off the page. I had done all of the things that I was told to do, and my story still felt incomplete.

I believe in the power of a mindset change just like my parents tried to instill in me as a child. The motivational quotes that they taped around the house were all about shifting your mindset, and as a child, I didn’t understand that.

There’s usually a flipside to every good thing, and with the false confidence that my parents instilled in me, I understood how to fix things but not why I was fixing them. It’s an intangible, invisible difference that can change your life.

We spend most of our lives fixing the superficial behaviors of what we are doing. We brush the tip of the iceberg but fail to dive under the surface of where our behaviors our rooted because ocean water is dark and freezing. To dive beneath the surface takes time, energy, and radical change, and our society has condemned that for the sake of speed.

But what has always scared me even more than going against the grain of society is living a life of regret, one where I die and feel like I never truly lived. Too many of us are going to look back on our lives and have checked every single box that society told us would make us a good person or acceptable and still feel like we’re not enough.

The solution – or shall I say, the lifelong battle – is understanding our desires. Why am I trying to change my body? Why do I want to do well in school? Why do I crave community? If we can understand our desires and how they are rooted in our identity, then we can begin the dive of time, energy, and radical change.

Changing our behaviors is going to do nothing if we don’t understand why we are doing what we are doing. Once I began to understand how body image had been manipulated in my mind and changed my mindset around healthy living, I began to delight in the body I am living in. Once I began to understand my need for external validation or the true importance of grades, I began to give myself grace for the mistakes I made in school. Once I began to understand how authentic community can benefit our lives, I began to let go of popularity and find true joy in my relationships.

At the core of digging through my desires, I recognized that my identity as a child in God is the most foundational and important marker of who I am rather than the boxes that I can check. This isn’t a one-and-done realization. It’s something I wrestle with every day.

So I ask you, where are you putting your identity? What is holding the weight of who you are? Whatever it is, you better make sure it’s pretty damn sturdy.