The Things We Do Change Who We Are

First published on November 7, 2019

The things we do change who we are. I really felt that last weekend. On a weekend away, I found myself talking about the projects I’m working on. The podcast, the book and the other book. Some of it was talking to people who I know well, who knew some or all of what I was working on (even if they didn’t know all the details of where I was up to). And some of it was talking to new people, to people I didn’t know, about those projects.

And I suddenly realised that once I have done those things I am different. I am seen differently by other people – someone who writes books, someone who has a podcast.

But more than that, I can think about myself differently. It happened on a tram on the way back to our accommodation on Friday night, after a conversation with friends about those three projects and the effect it might have on me. I looked at myself, reflected in the dark window of the tram, and thought, ‘Ah, I will be different after this.’ I saw a little bit of what other people may see when they look at me.

Some of this is the outside part: the sense that the things we achieve in the world give us credibility for others. And so they should: how else can we know to trust people except by looking at the things they have said and the things they have done?

But some of it is the inside part: the incredible power of setting a goal and achieving it. The gradual increase of confidence as we see the things that we set out to do happen in the world. The gradual growth of courage as we face our fears again and again and see that they don’t kill us or turn out as bad as we thought they might. And above all the gradual growth of the sense of self as we become someone who does what they say they will do, even when it gets hard.

Once you have started a website that you wanted to start for years, you are different. Once you start a business, and put yourself out there doing that, and work and work and work until you can be full-time, you are different. Once you start writing, and keep writing and writing and writing, you are different.

Of course it’s not just the big things: once you say No, and create the time at home alone, you are different. Once you take the day off work just for yourself, you are different. Once you decide not to check your email for an afternoon while you get on with something that actually matters, you are different.

Each of those things takes us up a level, transcending and including who we were before, but changed, grown, different.

And how do we decide what to do? Well, make a choice. Ask yourself a question like leadership coach Bob Anderson asks his clients: Where are you being asked to step up?

Choose to do what author and consultant Jamie Wheal does, and orient himself towards goodness, truth and beauty: accept that even if you don’t know exactly what to do, anything that brings more goodness, truth and beauty into the world is a good way to spend your time.

Steven Pressfield and Seth Godin taught me that if we orient ourselves towards what we most fear, where we feel the most Resistance, then that can be a compass towards the things which are most important to our soul’s evolution. That’s not a bad way to go, either.

The things we do change us, so all that remains is to choose what to do.