You can change your self-identity

Inspired by Agency and Atomic Habits (although I wish Atomic Habits stressed it more)

Realizing this has massively changed the way I behave and act. I don’t think that enough people realize this. They feel that they have to be “the kind of person that’s awkward in social situations”, “the kind of person that doesn’t drink water”, “the kind of person that’s unwilling to take risks”, and worst of all “the kind of person that’s unproductive”, “just not hard-working”, “just not as smart as X other person ”, “just not a math (insert X other subject) person”.

I was scared of truly allowing myself to learn deeply about the fundamentals of AI because I was “just not a math person”, “just not smart enough”, “not a researcher”, “not good at learning something by myself.”

As proof, think about your identity 5 years ago, and compare it to your identity now. If there isn’t much difference, stretch back even further. The point I’m trying to make is that your identity can change, and it can change radically. Most of your identity changes have probably been a product of changing circumstances. Maybe your friend group changed or you moved to somewhere new. But you can intentionally change your identity as well. You can:

• become a reader
• become good at math
• become “smarter”
• become more hard-working
• become more caring Intentional identity change is hard. The only way is to just go and do the thing that you think you can’t do, and convince yourself. Do the actions that you would do if you had the desired identity. A helpful way I’ve found of thinking about it, is to do the thing until you would use that identity to describe yourself in a bio. Using spaced repetition systems to change your thinking to more closely resemble what insert desired identity is also tremendously helpful. This can be a quick way to get you past the initial activation energy and build momentum while developing the desired identity.

For an identity that you truly care about getting, join a community of people with that identity. You’ll absorb the desired traits by osmosis. In person is great, but otherwise join a Reddit community, discord server, etc with a high density of people with your desired identity. It works wonders. Even the act of joining reinforces the identity.