Your identity is the most important thing about you.
It’s who you are. It’s how you think about yourself. It’s what makes you you. Your identity determines how you make sense of the world and how you’ll live.
But here’s the thing. You and I hear voices all the time telling us who we are and who we should be.
- Sometimes the voices come in our pain.
- Sometimes the voices come in what others say about us.
- Sometimes the voices come through our culture and the messages we get about how we should look or what success really looks like.
Someone once said that life is about identity construction. And the sad truth is, many of us have allowed these other voices to construct our identity. As a result, we don’t really know who we are. Like a chameleon, our identity changes to adapt to the circumstances and the people around us.
Have you ever noticed how you’re one person in one setting? But in another setting, you’re a different person. And then on social media, you’re someone else?
That’s not an identity, that’s an image. So here’s a question for you: Do you have an IDENTITY or an IMAGE?
Maybe you’re exhausted because you’re constantly trying to project a certain image to others. Maybe you’re anxious because you’re always afraid people will discover you’re a fraud. All this time you’re working to maintain an external image but on the inside you’re empty. There’s nothing there.
One author says that real identity is who you are when you think no one is watching, not the image you project because of what you want others to think about you.
So who are you? This is the question we’ll be looking at today.
