You Are Not Your Negative Label

Do you ever decide that you're just too lazy to go running every day? That you're a bonafide couch potato and nothing is ever going to change that? That you're too unorganised to ever use a planner, and that productivity is something that other people possess but most definitely not you? That you're too shy to ever go out on your own and try that class that catches your eye every time it's advertised, too reserved to ever be that person who makes new friends easily? That you're a natural pessimist who could never in a million years be considered to be positive?

Do you ever take a negative quality, whether it's truly negative or perceived to be that way (by yourself or others) and decide that it's your identity? 

I did that for a long time.

At first it was a subconscious thing - parents and teachers mean well but often they don't realise that after being told you are a certain way enough times you begin to believe it. The young me wasn't a fan of cleaning her room or being interrupted during her Saturday morning cartoons (or after-school cartoons, or any time Dragonball Z was on) so I was considered messy and lazy. During parent-teacher meetings, the terms 'shy', 'quiet' and 'slow' were regularly thrown around. I quickly figured out that I could change those labels if I wanted to. I especially wasn't a fan of being labelled slow.

So I decided to work hard to get to the top of the class: I don't think I was ever labelled slow again by another teacher (except maybe my P.E. teacher). At home, I stepped up my efforts and became neater so that messy was no longer my identifying label. I'd figured out that I could change the perceptions others had of me that I perceived to be negative. But then something strange happened. As I hit my teenage years, I got it into my head that it was "cool" to be lazy, unambitious, unorganised, unpunctual, etc. I called myself an "underachieving overachiever" like it was something to be proud of. It was an...odd time in my life.

Unfortunately this habit of identifying myself by my negative qualities led me to forget that they weren't all I was about. They became a source of comfort because I had all the excuses in the world to never reach outside my comfort zone: I was too lazy to ever get into shape, I was too shy to go to this party or that event, I was too pessimistic to ever look on the bright side of life.

I remember getting really annoyed at a friend who turned around and said "You are not lazy. That's just your favourite excuse." Those words stuck with me for a long time after that. I remember I was so angry with him. I mean - how dare he tell me that I'm not lazy? Of course I'm lazy! Then one morning I woke up and realised how absurd I was being. I was fighting tooth and nail to keep my glass half empty, but why? 

I can be lazy. I can be shy. I can be pessimistic and prone to negative disaster-type thinking. I can miss the mark and not do my best. I can have days where I exhibit all of the negative qualities a person can have all at once - but that's not all I'm about. Just like I'd missed the memo about learning involving actual learning, it hadn't occurred to me that it wasn't "cool" at all to identify by my negative labels - and it was definitely time I stopped. Little eight-year-old me had figured it out once, but hey - what do kids know? So I've since started focusing on all my positive aspects and identifying and working on those, and it has made an extraordinarily difference.

If you'd told me this time last year that I would be voluntarily waking up at five a.m. in order to make sure I have time during the day to blog, exercise and journal, that I'd be volunteering at festivals and enjoying myself and that I'd have a generally positive outlook on life and a 'can do' attitude, I would have laughed in your face. Even blogging seemed inconceivable because I'd branded myself "the type of person who starts things and never finishes them". That's why it was so important for me that my word of the year be 'persistence'. My goal this year was for that to be one of the many positive qualities I can be identified by; my New Year's Resolution was to become the type of girl who keeps going, no matter what.

If you do the same, it's time to turn over a new leaf. You are not your negative qualities - you are so much more than that. You are also kind, trustworthy, loyal, fun, funny, hard working, or whatever other positive quality you also possess alongside your negative ones. Highlight those. Or if there's a quality that you admire in someone else and don't currently possess, then slowly begin to adopt that into your life. When it comes to who you are as a person, our parents were right about one thing: you can be whoever you want to be.