Several years ago, I shared about how you can restore your identity if you lose sight of it. Reflecting on this, I thought it would be helpful to talk about how to avoid losing your identity in the first place. When you reflect, you can understand how you can end up in the unfortunate situation of not knowing who you are or living your life according to the wrong identity.
When you lose sight of your identity, you do not know who you are. When you do not know who you are, you miss out on the joy and satisfaction that comes with this understanding. You also miss out on the excitement of being who you are meant to be; filling in that jigsaw puzzle piece shape in the world that only you can fill in.
When I was six years old, I broke my arm while playing on a playground. Another kid was on her way down a slide, and I was going up; she hooked my leg, causing us to collide.
It was a pretty bad break; I was in a cast for a while. Not only that, but when the bone did not heal correctly, they had to re-break my arm to allow the bone to reset. Overall, it was not a great experience.
However, knowing how I broke my arm, you can be sure that I have never been knocked off a slide again. Even with my own kids to this day, I keep a close eye on them as they walk up slides to make sure no one else is going down in a way that will knock someone off.
By knowing how I got hurt, I try to make sure it does not happen again to myself or my family.
This is what you are seeking now. You want to know how you lose your identity so that in the future, whether with yourself or those you care about, you can hope to ensure it does not happen again. How then do you lose your identity? You believe lies about yourself. You have certain experiences that convince you of things about yourself that are not true.
In life, you have a variety of experiences, good and bad. Unfortunately, many people have viewed these experiences as data to determine aspects about themselves. You get turned down by a love interest, lose a job, get yelled at, or make a big mistake and see that as proof of a negative trait or an incorrect understanding of who you are.
Essentially, you let the world around you and what happens to you define you instead of walking in your own truth of who you really are. Instead, you should be who you are and go out into the world and let the world learn this truth. You shouldn’t look to the world and use it to discover who you are.
And so instead of having principles established to help you live out your identity, you allow the world to tell you who you are. You allow your experiences to inform you of whether you are good or not instead of knowing that you are good regardless of what happens or what others say about you.
In fact, you grow up looking at the wrong data to judge yourself. Getting a bad grade on a test means I am stupid, not being able to throw a football means I am less than others, and more experiences like these convince you of lies that misinform you about who you are. You then focus on these things instead of all of the good things about yourself that, for some reason, you think are less important, or that your good qualities are not as easily noticeable as others.
By paying attention to the wrong data and judging yourself according to it, you can believe a lot of lies about yourself. This can happen in a variety of ways, but the three main ways that you misjudge yourself are the following:
1. Focusing too much on how well you perform
Stop looking at the wrong data to determine who you are. Remember that who you are does not depend on how well you perform.
Basing someone’s value on how well they perform or what skills they have is problematic. It causes you to view each other and yourself as commodities, as things to be used. You learn not to value each other or yourself as the unrepeatable, irreplaceable, and precious beings of infinite value that you are.
2. You care too much about what others think of you.
Learning about other people’s opinions of you can have its place as you seek to grow and become the person you desire to be, but you should be careful of whose opinion you listen to and determine whether that opinion is true or not. Just because someone is smart or seems to have value to a lot of people does not mean their opinion of you is valid.
I recommend looking into the many logical fallacies out there to allow yourself to see objectively when someone is wrong about who you are. Furthermore, look at how Jesus handles those who had terrible takes on Him in the Gospel. You can find some good examples in Luke 13:10-17 and Matthew 22:15-22.
You can find yourself in conflict with opinions of what others think you should and should not do. Of course, if you discover that you are on the wrong side of an issue, you should adjust yourself accordingly. However, if you are in line with what is good, true, and beautiful and you are doing what is best for others and yourself, then you should not change to please someone else. Take to heart the words of St. Paul in Galatians 1:10 when he says, “Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
3. You judge yourself based on what you produce or bring to the world.
This is similar to basing your identity on your performance in that it does kind of look at how well you do something to determine who you are and how good you are; however, this is different enough to make it a separate point.
This error is different from judging yourself based on what grades you get, how much attention you get, or how much money you make. This is judging yourself basically by how important you think you are or what your impact is on the world.
It is just as bad as the other errors because you are treating yourself like you are less than human. You are treating yourself like a machine or animal that is only meant to bring value to others. This is a failure to see that you have value simply because you exist. This is a grave error because it leads you to think that you cannot have a good, quality life unless you are important, unless you are famous, or unless you can help a lot of people.
This leads to dissatisfaction with yourself and your life in that you expect more than what you have or can do. It might cause you to look at your life and think it is worthless because you don’t see the value you bring to those around you.
The truth is that you recognize how good you are and how good your life truly is when you pay attention to the right data. Furthermore, you will be well inclined to maintain the proper understanding of your true identity.
If you are seeking more help with this or think you need help restoring your identity, consider signing up for our mentorship service. We are seeing God restore many people to who He created them to be and understand their true value. Even after going through many hardships and obstacles in life, healing is happening for them. Learn more at https://zenithministries.com/mentorship
