Creating a Better Self

Atomic Habits is an outstanding book. It is clearly written, inspiring, actionable, and insightful. It contains information that is new to me – and I have read many books on self-development over many years – and states those ideas in a way that feels like I could do something with them. I want to do something with them! I very highly recommend it.

I'm restarting it, to incorporate more of the suggestions, and today I was struck by the identity concepts. "Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become." Isn't that beautifully stated? And it's central: who do I want to become? What goals would that person have? What habits would she practice to reach those goals and to express the person she is?

One of my very first posts here was that I am more of a net than an arrow. That was an identity statement. I believe I am a generalist. I like to spread my efforts among multiple goals. I enjoy having more than one focus for my attention, over the course of a day, over the course of a week, over the course of months or years, or over the course of a lifetime. However, all these statements are identities, and I could change them.

Here's another meta-belief: I believe that the likeliest way to change a value is to adhere more strongly to a higher value. In a class recently, someone asked me if my values had changed. It's an excellent question. I stopped and reviewed my history.

There is a bias for humans to think we thought the same way in the past that we think now. We don't remember how we thought before we changed our minds without an extra effort to do so. Knowing this, I looked first at how my behavior had changed, which is easier to observe. And I could see: I used to have a much stronger belief in having everyone follow the same rules than I have now. I've gained a value for diversity that now ranks higher than what I might previously have called a value for equal application of the rules.

That may be because I have a higher value for kindness, for treating humans well, than I have for fairness. Or it may be because I now spend more time around people who value diversity than people who value lawfulness.

When I made a mission statement, that was a clarifying effort to discover and enhance what is most important to me. In many ways, it was a discovery or creation or strengthening of identity.

James Clear, in Atomic Habits, inspired me to take the next step and ask, "What frequent actions would someone who valued this mission take?" I can think of a few. And I'll write more about them another day.