RESHAPING WHO YOU ARE

“The words and labels you choose to identify with
shape who you are.”
~ Emily McDonald

Last year, I started following Emily on IG – a neuroscientist who shares a wealth of fascinating information on how our brains work. [If you’re interested in the science behind everything from learned behaviors to how we perceive colors, check out her profile, give her a follow and show her some love: @emonthe brain 💞]

Then, a few days ago, Miz Emily left me shooketh to my very core after reading the above caption on one of her videos.

You see, I had been desperately trying to ‘rewire’ my brain in order to delude myself into believing that I actually enjoy exercising … for those of you who are unaware, my superpower is Laziness, and a treadmill is basically my Kryptonite !!! Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you – the only way you’ll get this mafqr to run is if there’s another one chasing it !!!🥴😖🤡 … So, it seemed almost serendipitous when that particular video popped up in my feed, as if the universe were quietly whispering to me through a bullhorn. 🙃

By labeling myself as ‘lazy’, or ‘allergic to exercise’, I was in fact training my brain to embrace that mentality, and ultimately turning that mindset into a reality for myself.

However, mama didn’t raise no dummy, so I knew that after years of falling victim to my own negative labeling, it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk for me to suddenly try to convince myself that I actually enjoy exercise. 👀🤔🧐

BUT … by changing the label I had imposed on it, I was able to adjust my perception of that thing I had previously hated and subsequently alter my approach to it – so, instead of looking at exercise as a tedious undertaking that I was loath to tackle, I labeled it an investment in my future health, thereby converting the chore into an avocation and turning a liability into an asset.

And as Emily pointed out in her video, the same becomes true for any label we place on ourselves.

For example: If we continuously refer to ourselves as ‘unlucky’, our brains naturally begin to seek out evidence to substantiate that belief; but if we label ourselves ‘a winner’, we instead begin to look for achievements which corroborate the fact that we’re successful – whether those triumphs be large or small, whether it’s getting a big promotion at work or simply getting a parking space right next to the door at the grocery, we begin to pay more attention to the good things in our life as opposed to the negative.

So, this year I want us to focus on rebranding ourselves – on shedding that old skin and stepping into the person we’re meant to be, on casting off those self-imposed negative labels and reshaping ourselves into the best versions of us.

Yes, the Mandy of 2024 was fine. In fact, I might even go so far as to say she was downright charming and an absolute pleasure to know. 😎😁🙃

But did she always live up to her full potential? Was she consistently giving this race called Life her all, or was she half-assing her way through some parts of it, crawling under a few of the hurdles instead of jumping them and taking shortcuts across the field when no one was looking? Did she fall victim to her own self-imposed negative labels by allowing herself to believe in, and ultimately morph into, them? 🤔🧐

The good news is, it’s never too late to make a change in your life, to shake things up, to toss out the old and make room for the new. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do in 2025 – we’re going to change the way we view ourselves by tossing out all the old negativity with which we were previously saddled, and we’re going to make room in our hearts and our lives for all the good things the universe has in store for us.

So, as we kick off this year of Rebranding and Reshaping, I’d like to share a few quotes on the importance of not confining ourselves to a label:

“Labels are for filing.
Labels are for clothing.
Labels are not for people.”

~ Martina Navratilova

“To define yourself is to limit yourself.
Without labels you remain the infinite beinG.”

~ Deepak Chopra

“Be gently aware of your self-labeling
and your labeling of others,
and ask yourself if it’s
separating or connecting you to others.”

~ Radha Agrawal

“Once you label me,
you negate me.”

~ Soren Kierkegaard

“I don’t care what people call me;
labels have the negative value
of making smaller boundaries for people.”

~ Michael Graves

“I want out of the labels.
I don’t want my whole life crammed into a single word.”

~ Chuck Palahniuk

“The will to label will always prevail
over what’s being labeled,
usually at the expense of either
truth or understanding.”

~ Boyd Rice

“The moment you label a person
is the moment you stop seeking to understand them.”

~ Zach Mercurio

“Labeling is so self-limiting.
We are what we do,
not what we say we are.”

~ Montgomery Clift

“Titles are prisons of human potential.”

~ Natasha Tsakos

“If you think too hard about
who other people want you to be {as an artist},
it stops you from being who you want to be {as an artist}.”

~ Taylor Swift

“People will try to label you not good enough,
too slow, too old, too many mistakes.
You can’t stop negative comments or prevent negative labels,
but you can choose to not let them hold you back.”

~ Joel Osteen

“Break your bad labels
instead of living in them.”

~ Orrin Woodward

“Never label yourself.
Learn from the past and move on.”

~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

“Stop labeling yourself.
You are more than an adjective.”

~ Jojo Fraser

“Examine the labels you apply to yourself.
Every label is a boundary or limit
you will not let yourself cross.”

~ Wayne Dyer

“the danger of labeling someone
IS THE SEPARATION IT CREATES BETWEEN
WHO THEY ACTUALLY ARE AND
THE PERCEPTION OF THE PERSON
THEY THINK THEY HAVE TO BE.”

~ Jairek Robbins

“Labeling yourself is not only self-defeating,
it is irrational.
Your self cannot be equated with any one thing you do.
Your life is a complex and ever-changing
flow of thoughts, emotions, and actions.
To put it another way,
you are more like a river than a statue.”

~ David D. Burns

“[By] respecting differences while gaining insight
into our essential connected-ness,
we can free ourselves from the impulse
to rigidly categorize the world in terms of
narrow boundaries and labels.”

~ Sharon Salzberg

“I used to worry about the labels others placed on me…
until I realized my limitations weren’t coming from their labels
but from my own.”

~ Steve Maraboli