How do you perceive your identity- Atomic habits

I have recently been focussed on reading a chapter a day and this brought me to reading an amazing book by James Clear called Atomic habits. It emphasizes on building small good habits that eventually compound into big changes that we desire in our lives. I must admit, this is changing my life and I hope to share a lot more from my readings, so I can touch other lives that have a desire to change something about their life but do not know how to do it.

I recently read about identity and how that affects how you perceive yourself. How you want to see yourself and you want others to perceive you is your identity. When you seek what you want to be identified as then you start to ask yourself how others that you want to emulate behave. The focus should not be on the outcome but on the process. You need to be clear on what habits you need to practice every day in small doses in order to get where you want to get.

Many of us put a lot more emphasis on the goal and forget to focus on the process that gets you there instead. The saying “Take care of the process and the results will take of themselves” still holds. James Clear in his book “Atomic habits” talks about looking at behavior change in 3 parts. Determine what you want your identity to be and then devise a process that will get you there and then you will start to see the outcomes.

Ultimately, your habits matter because they help you become the type of person that you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally you become your habits. Atomic habit by James Clear

As human beings we always want to see quick results and then we get frustrated when they do not come through as fast we want but that is a wrong approach to making a permanent change. When we give up we have wasted a lot of time that we have already invested in the change process. This applies to the new age millionaires who always seem to have gotten all their wealth overnight. You hear phrases like “over-night” success. It just does not work like that. You have to be willing to put in the time, sweat, blood and tears. A lot of people give up just when the results are about to show.

I will summarise by quoting a few things that James Clear(Atomic habits) talks about identity

• These three levels of change: outcome change, process change, and identity change
• The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you want to become
• Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become
• Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity
• The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results(although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.