How To Change Your Life For Better? Change Your Identity (in 3 Steps)!

How to change your life for better? How to get rid of the old you? How to be successful in life?

Change comes from the core, the very essence of who you are. For lasting change, for success in life, you need to change who you are, you need to change your identity, you need to become a new you!

Identity shift is not only critical, without it, you will undoubtedly fail in your efforts to change for the better!

Think about it: If you are a non-smoker, then you “don’t” smoke! If you view yourself as a smoker, how will you every stop?

The below 3 step process to change your identity forms a critical part of our 7 step formula for success in life as described in How To Succeed In Life? 7 Steps That Will Make You Successful!

Step 1. Define the identity: Who am I? Or who do I want to become?

For change to be enduring, the change has to come from our innermost self – our very identity.

This is the foundational principle for successful, durable transformation and self-improvement. The first step is to identify who you want to be – who am I?

• To stop smoking, you need to become a non-smoker. I am a non-smoker.
• To lose weight, you need to become a slim person. I am slim.
• To exercise, you need to become a fit person. I am fit.

Step 2. Model the identity: What do I value?

From the identity flows the vision, beliefs, values and goals. By studying successful people with this identity, we can then build the blueprint for our own personal growth and change. How are these people different? What do they do differently?

• Who is a non-smoker? One who values their health.
• Who is a slim person? One who values nutritious food.
• Who is a fit person? One who values an active lifestyle.

Step 3. Identify the actions: What do I do? Every day?

If you closely examine what a successful role model does every day, you will find their actions and behavior consistently conform to the beliefs and values espoused by the role model.

• What does a non-smoker do every day? Doesn’t smoke, avoids smoke-infested areas, hangs out with non-smokers.
• What does a slim person do every day? Eats healthy, balanced meals, doesn’t overeat.
• What does a fit person do every day? Has habits that encourage movement, works out.

Change your identity, change your behavior

James Clear, in Atomic Habits, talks about three types of behavior changes:

1. Outcome-based behavior change that leads to desired outcomes. Stop smoking, lose 20 pounds, do 20 pushups are examples of desirable outcomes. 
2. Process-based behavior change that leads to different processes or actions. Wear a nicotine patch, go on an Atkins diet, join a gym are examples of changes to actions / behavior.
3. Identity-based behavior change that leads to a new identity. Becoming a non-smoker, a slim person, a fit person – these are examples of changing who you are.

The deepest changes, the more enduring changes are the ones that start with the core – the identity, and propagate to behavior and outcomes.

When you change your identity, you adopt identity-based habits: the behaviors of the new identity slowly become ingrained, adding positive feedback to your identity.

Start small, with simple habits. These small wins will bolster your self-image, boost your identity. As you develop confidence, you can add more identity-based habits, more sophisticated systems.

Small steps performed consistently lead to huge wins over time! It is more important to be consistent than to take on a lot, and stop doing!

How to change your life using psychology?

Why is selecting an identity or a role model so pivotal to self-growth? We look at two research studies from human psychology to lay down this foundation.

Psychological empowerment – “I don’t” vs “I can’t”

Patrick et al. discuss in “I Don’t” versus “I Can’t”: When Empowered Refusal Motivates Goal-Directed Behavior, a psychological study where two groups of people were instructed to use the words “I can’t” and “I don’t” when offered unhealthy food choices. Twice as many people in the “I don’t” group picked the healthier option (a granola bar) compared to the “I can’t” group (a chocolate bar) at the end of the study.

While many people use these words interchangeably in many contexts, what the study demonstrated is that people who associate themselves with an identity or role model or self-image get core beliefs from it – then it becomes second nature not to act against these beliefs. I am this type of person, hence “I don’t” do this.

• If you are a non-smoker, then you “don’t” smoke.
• If you are a slim person, then you “don’t” overeat cake.

Your very identity protects you from temptation, especially with the subtle psychological empowerment from the right word choices!

Identity shift with long-term commitment

Dr. Gary McPherson researched why performance among music students varied so dramatically – some progressed rapidly, while others lagged. He followed 157 children from just before their start of their music study through high school, and his research included videotaping practice sessions, detailed interviews, and biometric tests.

A critical insight from the research emphasized what drove the students’ motivation – “how long do you think you will play your instrument?” Their answers were categorized into short-term, medium-term and long-term commitment. The figure below shows their performance plotted against their weekly practice time (low = 20 minutes/week, medium = 45 minutes/week, high = 90 minutes/week).

What is remarkable from this simple chart is by how much students with long-term commitment outperformed their peers – 400% with roughly the same amount of practice! What was different in these students? Where did this long-term commitment come from? In Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born: It’s Grown, McPherson reveals:

“… the ideas they brought to the first lesson were probably far more important than anything a teacher could’ve done, or any amount of practice. At some point very early on they had a crystallizing experience that brought the idea to the fore that said, ‘I am a musician.’ That idea was like a snowball rolling downhill”

Embracing the identity, “I am a musician” had a profound impact on their performance! Coupled with a long-term commitment, the results were amazing!

• If I am a non-smoker for the rest of my life, I would be strongly motivated to resist temptation and to avoid smokers and second-hand smoke!
• If I am a slim person for the rest of my life, I would be strongly motivated to focus on healthy, balanced meals!
• If I am a fit person for the rest of my life, I would be strongly motivated to lead an active lifestyle and to exercise regularly!
• If I am a blogger till retirement, I would be strongly motivated to pick up writing skills and develop a routine for posting blogs!

Identity-based habits

Just think for a moment: If I am a slim person for the rest of my life, why wouldn’t I eat a piece of healthy fruit today, or take a 5 minute walk after dinner, or break my dessert into half a portion to eat less sugar?

With long-term commitment, simple habits aligned with the new identity become easy! And with these easy wins, our identity forms and grows till many of these become second nature to us, they get automated to identity-based habits.

Long-term commitment is how you change your identity for enduring change, lasting success in life! It provides the motivation, self-discipline and will power to acquire the right knowledge, and commit to spending time to learn the right skills. No more shortcuts! You do it right, because you want to succeed, and you have all the time in the world!

The long-term time element is not only crucial to success, but also to lower unrealistic expectations. After all, the children in Dr. McPherson’s study were not thinking about playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata in the first week. They knew it would take time, and they committed their focus to deeper learning during their 30-45 minute daily practice.

We, too, must think long term. No more goals like losing weight in 20 days – all that does is set us up for failure. We look for shortcuts like the latest fad diet: unhealthy yo-yo dieting that has been proven not to work in the long-term.

Instead, with the motivation from our long-term commitment to an identity shift for the better, we look to proven success strategies: systems thinking, building effective systems for success, and executing them consistently (as described in our 7 step formula for success in life).

We start by implementing simple habits into our daily life, that will make us better and better, day by day! Habits like eating a piece of fruit every day and taking a 5 minute walk inside our house after dinner.

When we can do these successfully, we move to others that may be harder: reducing what we eat for dessert by half. We are in no hurry, because we have a long-term horizon: our main focus is to implement these healthy identity-based habits into a system that we use repeatedly, day after day.

While even these may be challenging for some, we show how to leverage psychology and neuroscience to overcome procrastination, recover from lapses, and start afresh, when needed.

How to be successful in life?

Our self-image is flexible. The critical first step for success in life and enduring change is to change your identity for the better. Figure out what you want to become, and adopt that identity.

Discover what it means to embrace the new identity – what beliefs, values and vision comes with it? What does success mean for this identity? What does this role model do to achieve success?

With the new identity comes behaviors that align with it, identity-based habits, and when we behave and act in conformity, we reinforce our identity.

The above psychological studies show how subtle changes to how we view ourselves profoundly impact the type of progress we make:

• “I am a non-smoker” vs “I am a non-smoker for the rest of my life” emphasizes the long-term commitment to our identity.
• “I don’t eat ice cream” vs “I can’t eat ice cream” emphasizes it is not in my nature to eat ice cream.

We all know that practicing is important to play music and ice cream is not good for our health. But moving from “theoretically knowing these facts” to “putting it into practice” needs a push – research on human psychology tells us that from a long-term commitment to a new identity comes the motivation needed for long-lasting change, for success in life!

But these 3 steps are just the beginning: to successfully attain our goals, we need to design, build and execute systems that make us better, every day! We need to embrace the journey.