If you were asked to describe yourself in three words, you might be able to manage it in about four seconds. Loyal. Organised. Ambitious. A worrier. The reliable one. Someone who has never been much good at confrontation.
Whatever comes to you, you will notice how little effort it took. And notice that the three words probably aren’t all complaints. Some of them you’d stand behind quite happily, and you’d be right to. You are good with people, or you are reliable, or you do work harder than most.
When your conclusions about yourself are ones you are proud of, they will work for you in all sorts of ways. If they are ones you’re not so proud of, then those are the ones that don’t work for you so well.
In any event, your conclusions are a result of your experiences. Some of what you concluded was accurate. Some of it was not. They become a problem when those conclusions harden into facts in your belief system. This is the moment a conclusion stops being a conclusion and turns into a description.
When a Description Becomes a Definition
There is a small but important difference between recognising something we learned and believing it is simply who we are. We might say, “I learned to worry because life was unpredictable for a while,” but over time that becomes, “I’m an anxious person.” Or, “I learned that disagreement wasn’t safe,” becomes, “I’m just not assertive.” Perhaps, “I coped because somebody had to,” becomes, “I’m the strong one.”
In the first version, we can see how the pattern developed. In the second, we have turned it into part of our identity. Once we believe something is simply who we are, we are much less likely to question it.
That is why understanding our history can be so useful. It helps us recognise that some of the things we have always considered to be our personality may actually be learned responses. We do not have to reject them, but we can begin to ask whether they are still helping us, or whether we would like to respond differently.
The Point Where It Starts to Cost You
In an earlier article, I mentioned Don Miguel Ruiz Jr’s Five Levels of Attachment. Here is the model in full, and I want to use it for one specific purpose: to notice the point at which a belief stops being something we hold and becomes something we think we are.
- Authentic self. You can pick the idea up or put it down. It’s information, not you.
- Preference. You like it. You’d choose it. But you could manage without it.
- Identity. The idea has become a description of you. You’ve started saying “I am” where you used to say “I prefer”.
- Internalisation. You defend it. Someone disagreeing feels less like disagreement and more like being got at.
- Fanaticism. You need other people to agree, because not agreeing is a threat to who you are.
The model applies far beyond self-belief, but for now the important threshold is the one between preference and identity.
How Attachment Plays Out
A friend’s partner is a staunch football fan. His life revolves around when his team is playing, and his mood can depend on how well they are doing. One day, we met a rival fan who made a disparaging comment about his team. To me, it was just banter, a mischievous tease. To him, it felt like a personal insult. He was furious, and nothing we said could persuade him to let it go. He spent the rest of the day fuming about it.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with being passionate about football. The difficulty comes when something we care about becomes so closely tied to our sense of self that a criticism of it feels like a criticism of us. What might otherwise have been a bit of harmless banter becomes something we feel we need to defend ourselves against.
Most of us have beliefs or preferences that we identify with quite strongly, and there is nothing shameful about that. The important thing is to recognise when a preference has become part of our identity. That is when we can begin to take things personally, even when they were never really about us. And, as my friend’s partner discovered, it can turn an otherwise enjoyable day into one filled with unnecessary suffering.
The Seat of Suffering
It can be useful to recognise where a relationship sits on the five levels, whether that is with yourself, another person, your work or a particular situation. The more closely we identify with something, the more difficult it can be when it changes or is taken away. Pain is a natural response to loss. Suffering can arise when we find it difficult to let go of what we believe that loss means about us.
This applies to beliefs we value as well as those that make us feel inadequate. Even a positive belief can become a source of suffering if we feel we must defend it.
Try taking one of the three words you chose earlier, perhaps the one you are proudest of, and imagine no longer needing it to describe you. Does that feel freeing, or do you immediately want to explain why it is true? If you feel the need to defend it, it may be worth asking what you believe you would lose if you let it go.
A Way Of Being
What took me much longer to understand was that our beliefs do not operate separately. Over time, they become connected and form what we might call a paradigm, or a way of being. They shape how we see ourselves, other people and the world around us. Eventually, we become so used to them that we no longer recognise them as beliefs. They simply feel like who we are.
This is why our beliefs can influence our lives without us being aware of it. They affect the opportunities we consider, the relationships we pursue, the choices we make and even the things we decide are not possible for us. We may believe we are making those decisions freely, without realising that our expectations have already narrowed the possibilities.
Looking back at my own life, I can see how my belief that certain opportunities were not for people like me shaped the choices I made long before I ever questioned it. At the time, I was not consciously deciding to limit myself. I simply did not see those opportunities as available to me. That is how powerful a way of being can become, and why learning to recognise it is such an important part of self-awareness.
How My Paradigm Played Out
Looking back, I can see how two sets of beliefs were working together. On one side, I believed I was not worth very much, that I was not especially lovable and that I did not really matter. On the other, I knew I was resilient, that I loved learning and that I was loyal and loving. For years, I thought of these as separate things: the first set to overcome and the second to be grateful for. What I did not realise was how they could work together, sometimes in ways that were not good for me.
Relationships
My romantic relationships have probably been the most painful example. I can see now that my sense of unworthiness influenced the partners I chose. I was drawn to people who, in different ways, reinforced what I already believed about myself. But it was my loyalty that kept me in those relationships, and my resilience that made it possible to stay for far longer than was good for me.
I used to think I was not very good at protecting myself because I was weak. I can see now that it was more complicated than that. I was strong, but I was using that strength to endure situations I needed to leave. The qualities I valued in myself were not the problem. It was the beliefs directing them.
Working Life
For a working-class girl, I did reasonably well in my career, certainly better than I had imagined possible when I was younger. I have often wondered how I managed that while still carrying those beliefs about myself. I think part of the answer is that I was trying to prove something. Achievement became a way of showing myself, and perhaps other people, that I was capable and that I mattered.
I can see this particularly clearly in the business I set up. It never became what I wanted it to be, and when it began to struggle, I did not fight for it in the way I might have expected. For a long time, I saw that as a failure of resilience, which was difficult because resilience was one of the qualities I had always relied on.
I have since come to understand that I did not really want the business itself. I wanted to be the sort of woman who had a business. There is a difference between pursuing something because it genuinely matters to you and pursuing it because you believe it will prove something about you. I still think I could have shown more staying power, but I also needed to question why I had taken that path in the first place.
Children
Then there are my three children, the loves of my life, who grew up in split homes as a result of the choices I made. My beliefs did not only affect me. They influenced the decisions that shaped their childhood, and I have had to come to terms with that.
They are adults now, and I am eternally proud of them. They are loving, capable people who are making a good job of their own lives. I do not want to use that as a way of dismissing the difficulties they experienced. But one thing I did try to do, because I was so aware of where my own choices had taken me, was help them recognise and trust their own Higher Selves from an early age.
That brings me to something I have not yet fully explained, but which has been important throughout my life. Despite the emotional absence I experienced growing up, I always knew there was a loving presence available to me. It was not something I had been taught, and I did not think of it as a belief. It was simply something I experienced, and I knew I could turn to it.
I have come to think that this was the one part of me my old beliefs never really touched. Whatever I believed about my worth, I still had access to that loving perspective. It helped me keep questioning, learning and finding a different way forward. I also believe it helped me give my children something I had not always known how to give myself.
The important thing is that none of these decisions felt like beliefs operating at the time. They felt like reasonable choices based on my circumstances. It is only looking back that I can see how much my expectations and sense of self were influencing them. That is why our paradigms can be so difficult to recognise: they do not feel like beliefs. They feel like the way things are.
Nothing Is Lost by Looking
Our beliefs influence what we notice, how we interpret what happens and what we take as evidence that we were right all along. That is why simply arguing with ourselves about a belief is not always enough. We may understand intellectually that it is not true, while still experiencing life as though it is.
For me, the first step was learning to stand back and look at what was happening. I would like to say I chose to do that, but the truth is that pain eventually made me look. I had spent years experiencing my life without really questioning the beliefs behind my reactions. It was only when some of those experiences became too painful to continue in the same way that I began to ask what was going on.
It was not always straightforward. Sometimes I could recognise a pattern quite quickly and see which belief had been influencing me. Other times, I could look at something I had done and have no idea why I had done it. I might recognise that my reaction had not been helpful, but still not understand what was underneath it. That did not mean I was doing anything wrong. It simply meant I had not yet understood it.
The important thing is that we do not lose anything by looking. We do not have to reject the person we have become or decide that everything we learned was a mistake. Many of the qualities we developed through our experiences are valuable, and we can choose to keep them.
I still value my appetite for learning, my independence and my ability to stay reasonably calm when other people cannot. Understanding how those qualities developed does not make them any less mine. It simply helps me recognise when I am using them because I genuinely want to, and when an old belief is driving me.
That, for me, is the difference self-awareness makes. We can appreciate who we have become while giving ourselves the freedom to choose how we want to live now.
We do not have to reject the person we have become or decide that everything we learned was a mistake
Try This: Putting Down Your Three Words
Choose three words you would use to describe yourself. They might be qualities you value, such as strong, independent or caring, or words you are less comfortable with, such as anxious, impatient or not good enough.
Take each one in turn and imagine that you no longer need to be that kind of person.
For example, if one of your words is “strong”, imagine that you no longer have to be the strong one. You can still be strong when you need to be, but you do not have to prove it or live up to that description.
Notice how you feel. Does the thought bring relief, or does it make you uncomfortable? Do you immediately want to explain why the word really does describe you?
If you feel uncomfortable or want to defend the word, it may be a sign that you have become quite attached to that part of your identity. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is worth being curious about.
Ask yourself: Have I ever made a choice, stayed in a situation or turned down an opportunity because I believed I had to be this kind of person?
You do not need to find an answer today. The purpose is simply to begin recognising how your beliefs about yourself may be influencing your choices. Once you can see them, you have more
When we begin to develop self-awareness, it can be a revealing but sometimes painful exercise. Undoubtedly it might take a long time. Because of that, you must be willing to begin this journey, and that’s what we look at next.
Articles in Self-Awareness
Self-Awareness: The Gateway to Your Higher Self
- Why You React the Way You Do
- How Beliefs Shape Your Experience
- The Only Thing You Have to Do Is Be Willing
- Turning From Experience To Observation
- From Observing to Choosing