Your identity isn’t just one or two traits, or a few beliefs you picked up along the way. It’s a structure built on three powerful levels, and each one influences your thoughts, your behaviors, and your potential in unique ways. Understanding this structure is the first step to transforming your reality.
What is Your Identity?
You are who you decide you are.
That might sound simple, but it's one of the most profound truths you can learn when it comes to shaping the direction of your life. I've had some deep conversations with my mentor, Robert, about identity—and how it’s far more layered than most people realize.
Your identity isn’t just one or two traits, or a few beliefs you picked up along the way. It’s a structure built on three powerful levels, and each one influences your thoughts, your behaviors, and your potential in unique ways. Understanding this structure is the first step to transforming your reality.
This is the most visible level of identity—and often the most superficial. It includes:
These aspects help paint the picture of who you appear to be. But they are not permanent. You are not confined by your resume, your past habits, or even your environment. This layer of identity can evolve as quickly as you choose to shift it.
This layer runs deeper. It’s made up of the stories you’ve created from past experiences—both good and bad. These moments shape your worldview and your beliefs about yourself:
But here's the key: meaning is only what you give it.
Every experience only holds the power you assign it. This means you have the ability—and the right—to change these beliefs. When you revisit a painful memory, you can choose to see strength instead of weakness, growth instead of failure.
You are not the stories you’ve been told or the ones you've told yourself. You are the narrator—and you can rewrite the script.
This is the level where transformation happens.
It’s how you actively manage your identity on a day-to-day basis. This is the conscious work of:
This layer has the power to influence the first two levels—if you’re proactive.
When you take charge at this level, everything changes. You become the creator of your reality. You develop confidence from productivity, uncover talents you forgot you had, and create an inner momentum that attracts opportunities.
Take a moment and write out your identity in each of the three levels:
The ultimate goal is to construct an identity that empowers you. One that you choose. One that pulls you toward your highest potential—not drags you back into old patterns.
When you decide who you are—and reinforce that with action—you start to eliminate self-limiting beliefs by replacing them with purpose, direction, and truth.
But none of it works unless you do one thing:
Accept that you have the power to change.
When you do that, everything shifts.
You will change.You will grow.And you will become exactly who you decide to be.