8–9 minute read
Most people assume that changing their lives begins with finding the right strategy. They want the right plan, system, routine, or set of steps that will finally get them where they want to go. Strategy matters, but even the best strategy is useless if you can’t get yourself to follow it.
You can know that you need to make the call, have the conversation, set the boundary, take the risk, or begin the work and still do nothing. The problem isn’t always that you don’t know what to do. Often, the problem is the state from which you’re trying to do it.
Some personal-development teachers recognize this and teach people to change their state by changing their physiology, moving their bodies, speaking with intensity, repeating affirmations, generating enthusiasm, or pushing themselves into action. These methods can work. Music, movement, breathing, and focused attention can quickly change how you feel, and sometimes deliberately shifting your energy is exactly what you need.
But a state you must continually manufacture has to be continually maintained. You pump yourself up, push yourself forward, and feel powerful for a while, but eventually the energy fades. Then you assume you need more motivation, greater discipline, or another push. You become dependent upon willpower to keep yourself moving, and when your willpower runs out, you blame yourself for failing.
There’s another way, and it begins with understanding the difference between your emotional state and your state of being.
Your Emotional State Isn’t Your State of Being
Your emotional state is how you feel at a particular moment. You may feel confident, enthusiastic, peaceful, anxious, discouraged, or afraid. Emotional states constantly change in response to your thoughts, body, environment, circumstances, and the people around you.
Your state of being is something deeper. It’s who you’re being in relationship to whatever you’re experiencing. You can feel afraid while being courageous. You can feel uncertain while being committed. You can feel disappointed while being compassionate toward yourself. You can feel angry while being honest and responsible rather than cruel or destructive.
This distinction matters because you don’t have to create the right emotional state before you can take action. You don’t need to eliminate fear before you can be courageous, manufacture confidence before you can move forward, or force yourself to feel positive before you can create something meaningful.
Your feelings are part of your experience, but they don’t have to decide who you’re going to be.
The Identity You Learned to Live From
Who you believe yourself to be affects how you feel, what you expect, and how you act. If you believe you’re weak, incapable, undisciplined, unlovable, or likely to fail, you’ll approach life from that identity. Fear will feel like evidence that you can’t handle what’s in front of you, and every setback will seem to confirm what you already believe about yourself.
But these beliefs aren’t objective descriptions of who you are. They’re conclusions you’ve formed from past experiences, other people’s judgments, and stories your mind has repeated for years. Something happened, you decided what it meant about you, and eventually that meaning began to feel like your identity.
You made a mistake and concluded, I’m not capable. Someone rejected you and you decided, I’m not lovable. You felt afraid and turned that feeling into, I’m a coward. Something you tried didn’t work, and the experience became evidence that you don’t have what it takes.
The event is one thing. What you make the event mean about you is another.
Your mind can produce a thought about you without that thought being you. It can tell you that you’re going to fail, and you can still move forward. You can feel shame without concluding that there’s something shameful about who you are. You can hear the thought I’m not enough without turning it into your identity.
When you stop treating the conclusions created by your past as fixed truths about who you are, you create room to become someone new.
You Aren’t Fixed
Psychologist Carol Dweck’s research on fixed and growth mindsets demonstrates how powerfully our beliefs about ourselves influence the way we approach difficulty. A fixed mindset assumes that intelligence, talent, and ability are qualities you either possess or you don’t. A growth mindset recognizes that abilities can be developed through effort, learning, effective strategies, and support.
If you interpret a struggle as proof that you don’t have what it takes, you’re more likely to feel defeated, protect yourself from further failure, and quit. If you believe you can learn, adapt, and become more capable, the same struggle takes on a different meaning. Difficulty is no longer a verdict on your ability. It becomes part of developing it.
The challenge hasn’t changed, but who you believe yourself to be in relationship to that challenge has. That belief changes your emotional state, the possibilities you can see, and the actions you’re willing to take.
Recognizing that you can grow is essential, but it’s only the beginning. The deeper question is not simply whether you can change. It’s who you’re choosing to be.
Being Is a Choice and a Commitment
Most people allow their state of being to be determined by their thoughts, emotions, past, circumstances, and other people. When they feel confident, they act confidently. When they feel afraid, they become hesitant. When someone rejects them, they become unworthy. When life becomes difficult, they become powerless.
Living consciously means reversing that relationship. Instead of allowing what you’re experiencing to determine who you’re being, you decide who you’re going to be in relationship to what you’re experiencing.
You might decide, I am courage. That doesn’t mean you’ll never feel afraid or that you must convince yourself fear isn’t present. It means courage is who you’ve chosen to be when fear appears. You feel the fear, remain connected to your commitment, and take the action anyway.
You might choose to be loving during a difficult conversation, honest when telling the truth could cost you something, or responsible when it would be easier to blame someone else. You might commit to being someone who takes action, keeps promises, creates possibilities, or remains present when your mind wants to escape into regret and worry.
Being isn’t another label to place on yourself or an affirmation you’re supposed to repeat until you believe it. It’s a commitment that organizes your actions. If you say I am courage but continually allow fear to make your decisions, courage is only an idea. You create courage by expressing it through what you do.
Instead of asking, How do I get rid of this fear so I can act? you ask, Who am I choosing to be in the presence of this fear? Instead of asking, How do I make this person treat me differently? you ask, Who am I going to be in this relationship? Instead of asking, Why is this happening to me? you ask, Who will I be in relationship to what’s happening, and what will I create from here?
You don’t wait for your state of being to arrive. You choose it, commit to it, and give it form through your actions.
How You Relate to Yourself Changes What’s Possible
Choosing who you’re going to be is only part of the change. You can commit to being courageous, capable, and powerful while still treating yourself with relentless criticism, pressure, and contempt. You can demand more from yourself, punish yourself for mistakes, and call it discipline. You may accomplish things that way, but you’ll have to keep fighting yourself to do it.
This is where your relationship with yourself becomes essential. It’s more than positive thinking or saying nicer words. It’s the fundamental attitude you hold toward yourself, especially when you’re struggling. Do you relate to yourself as a problem that needs to be fixed, or as someone worthy of patience, encouragement, respect, and support?
Most people try to change from a position of self-rejection. They believe they must become more successful, disciplined, attractive, productive, or confident before they can respect themselves. Their effort carries an unspoken message: Who I am right now isn’t good enough.
That attitude creates internal conflict because nobody thrives for long in a relationship built on criticism and conditional acceptance. You may be able to intimidate yourself into action temporarily, but you can’t create a happy and fulfilling life while remaining at war with the person living it.
When you become someone who is genuinely on your own side, the state from which you act begins to change. You encourage yourself because you believe you’re worth encouraging. You remind yourself of your abilities because you recognize that you’re capable. You respond to mistakes with honesty and support instead of turning them into evidence against yourself. You stop using shame as fuel and begin acting from self-respect.
Being on your own side doesn’t mean lowering your standards, excusing your behavior, or pretending that everything you do is acceptable. It means telling yourself the truth without using the truth as a weapon. You can hold yourself accountable, make repairs, and expect more from yourself without withdrawing your respect and support.
This is where change begins to flow more naturally. You’re no longer trying to force a frightened, ashamed, and rejected person to act powerful. You’re relating to yourself as someone capable, worthy of encouragement, and able to meet what life brings. You still have to act, practice, and keep your commitments, but you’re no longer fighting yourself every step of the way.
From Victim to Creator
Living as the creator of your life doesn’t mean denying what has happened to you, pretending circumstances don’t matter, or believing you can control everything. It means recognizing that whatever has happened and whatever you’re feeling, you still have the ability to participate in what happens next.
A victim allows the past, other people, circumstances, thoughts, and emotions to determine who they are being and what they do. A creator recognizes those influences without surrendering choice to them. You may not have chosen what happened, and you may not be able to control what happens next, but you can choose who you’ll be in relationship to it.
Creation usually doesn’t look dramatic. You create your life when you have the conversation you’ve been avoiding, tell the truth, set a boundary, apologize, ask for help, take a risk, keep a promise, or stop attacking yourself for being human. You create through the choices you make in the present moment because the present moment is the only place you can create anything.
There will still be days when you feel tired, afraid, discouraged, or uncertain. The difference is that those feelings no longer get to define you or determine what you do. You don’t have to defeat your emotions before you can live powerfully. You can experience them, remain on your own side, and choose who you’ll be in relationship to them.
Change Who You’re Being, and You Change What Follows
Strategy tells you what to do, but who you’re being determines how you meet what happens, how you relate to yourself, and whether you act on what you know.
Who you believe you are is your identity. Who you choose to be in this moment is your state of being. How you treat yourself while living that choice is your relationship with yourself. Together, they affect your emotional state, your actions, your relationships, and ultimately the life you create.
You don’t need to keep pumping yourself up, forcing yourself forward, or waiting until you feel fearless. Recognize that the identity created by your past isn’t a permanent definition of who you are. Decide who you’re going to be. Commit to expressing that choice through your actions, and relate to yourself as someone worthy of encouragement, respect, and trust.
Change who you’re being, and you change everything that follows.