Who You Decide To Be

I ran across a quotation recently that sums up perfectly what happens when you embark on the path I call A Decided Difference. It goes like this: “You are who you decide to be.” This is the first part in a series of five and I’m going to start today by addressing the topic of…getting started.

Whoever or however you think you are right now, you can decide to change. I know, because I have done it many times, and I continue to do it. You can change how you see yourself, how you make choices, and how you behave. Your vision, your decisions, and the actions you take ultimately determine whom you become. It really is just that simple. You get to be who you decide to be.

Deciding Who to Be

I decided more than fifteen years ago that I was not going to be a person who was beaten down by depression or controlled by anxiety. That decision came about because of a single sentence my counselor Jim said to me. I had been diagnosed with major depression and had taken multiple antidepressant drugs over more than a decade, but the day came when Jim told me he didn’t think I had major depression. He said, “I think any normal person living in your circumstances would feel depressed.”

That’s right. After years and years of thinking I needed to be fixed or cured because I was defective at best or mentally ill at worst, I started to consider instead that I might be a normal person, having normal reactions to the circumstances of my life.

Jim dared to challenge my idea of who I was. He shined a light on who I was and what I could be. When I saw myself in that different light, I could start to become the person I decided to be.  Actually, let me clarify that. I was already the person I had decided to be. I just had decided that I agreed with the people who said I was depressed, and I allowed myself to believe like, behave like, and become a depressed person.

Please do not misunderstand. When I decided to change, it was not easy. It was not fast, and it was not a simple process. It was a messy process filled with pain and losses. It was not sunshine and roses every day, but every day was better than it had been during the time I allowed myself to feel depressed. Because I stayed with it, the days of sunshine and roses did eventually come. Jim helped me to see, but if it was to be, it was up to me.

Choosing Change

Starting today, and continuing for the new four weeks, I want to walk you through this process of choosing your change and start making it happen. Next week, I’ll talk about how to clarify what you want to be, do, and have. In week three, I’ll cover beginning the process of change, and during week four, I’ll talk about how to hang in there when the going gets tough. Finally, in week five, I’ll talk about how to keep the commitment to living under the Decided Difference umbrella, committing to healthy thinking and healthy behavior for the rest of your life.

You can begin the process of change by deciding who and what you want to be. You can also

begin—and I do recommend this—with defining who and what you are not. This is where I started, by deciding that I was not going to be who I always thought I was. I am not a depressive type, although I do have times when I feel sad or apathetic. I do not identify as a worrier any more, although I do worry on occasion. I am not a victim of my circumstances. I am not a victim, period.

Fair warning: this process may be fairly unpleasant. If you start looking closely at the roles you have allowed yourself to take on and carry out, it may not be pretty. When I started thinking objectively about the things I was putting up with years ago, I felt bad about myself.

My inner critic weighed in, of course, as she always does, if I don’t consciously shut her down. Having awareness of the inner critic and being willing to challenge him or her will make this part of the process much easier to manage. Once you have identified who and what you do not want to be, it is a simpler matter to determine who and what you do want.

Forgiving the Past

In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot in St. Peter's Square in an attempted assassination. Two years later, the Pope visited his attacker, Mehmet Ali Ağca, in prison and spoke to him. Afterwards, the Pope said he had forgiven Ağca and the two men shook hands as they parted.

You don't have to be the Pope to have the capacity to forgive those who have hurt you. What this example illustrates is that no matter what has happened to you, who has hurt you, or what you have lost, you have the power to decide to move forward and do the things you want to do. You can choose to see yourself as no longer vulnerable to them. You can choose not to give them that power over you.

This is especially important if the person who has hurt you the most in the past…is you. You can set yourself free by deciding to stop being who you do not want to be and start becoming who you want to be, regardless of what has happened to you in the past, at the hands of other people or because of your own choices.

How do you become the person you decide to be? You begin by making the choice to move forward with your life, regardless of what has happened.

I think you will move forward more quickly if you also decide to begin with forgiveness for whatever has happened in your past. It's not only important to forgive others who have hurt you, but to forgive yourself, as well. You can begin to trust yourself not to hurt you again, at least not deliberately or not in a way that you have before.

Today is a new day. You don’t have to live it thinking about what happened in your past. You can decide to face forward, to look forward, and to move forward. I have a little plaque that hangs in my home that says, “Don’t look back. You aren’t going that way.” This is excellent advice.

You can trust yourself to move forward in faith that whatever happens, you will be able to cope with it. As you become stronger in your habits of thinking, you will not only cope with negative circumstances but also begin to thrive in spite of them.

I do not have sunshine and roses in my life every day, even thought I have committed to the path I call A Decided Difference. The sunshine and roses come and go, but my ability to decide, to think things through, to manage my emotions, and to make healthy choices for myself grows stronger as time goes on. The same can happen for you if you make the decision.

I'll be back next week to talk more about who you want to be now that you've decided to make a change.