How to change your identity. A guide to the highest leverage behavior change technique.

According to Atomic Habits, changing your identity is the highest leverage way to improve your habits, but nobody tells you how to do it.

Don’t say “I’m trying to quit smoking.” Say “I’m not a smoker”. Don’t say “I’m trying to lose weight.” Say “I’m a health nut.”

All well and good. But how do you practically do this, aside from stating your new identity? I’ve worked on developing the approach further and had a lot of success with these techniques.

And changing your identity is especially great because it creates "passive happiness". You do the work once and it lasts a lifetime with little to no maintenance.

Using these techniques I’ve successfully:

• Stopped being bothered by mosquitoes.
• Become able to wait patiently for food instead of freaking out when it's late.
• Learned to like the rain while living in Vancouver and London.
• Become a tough person instead of someone derailed by the smallest amount of pain.

All by doing what I call identity work.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Reinforce the new identity.
2. Starve the old identity.

Reinforce the new identity

Look for confirming evidence

First off, find facts that fit with this new identity. Find times in your past when you acted in a way congruent with the identity. Find frames that support this new identity. Basically look for confirming evidence and arguments.

Take for example becoming chill about mosquitoes. I grew up in Canada, and during the summer the bugs could get quite bad. Especially working for my mountain man father in the Canadian wilderness, where I had to choose between two campsites: the one with bugs or the one with bears. (I chose bugs. I regretted this decision.)

I would usually get into a state of absolute misery. Every sensation was a potential bug on my skin. Every bite drove me closer to insanity.

But I wanted to overcome this. So I thought of the times it hadn’t bothered me. I thought of that summer night with a good friend where there were bugs but I was so caught up in the conversation I didn’t care.

I thought of new frames, like how my dad was never bothered by bugs. He said they were good for you. (Presuming you're in an area with no diseases carried by mosquitoes.)

And I thought of arguments: hunter gatherers presumably lived with mosquitoes their entire lives and weren’t being driven to madness over it. I was going to be living with mosquitoes for the rest of my life, and I didn't want to choose where I lived and traveled based on a tiny stupid bug.

(On a side note: I also solved mosquitoes. See here for the two pieces of equipment that remove practically all bites and itchiness.)

Make it social

So that’s step one. Another way to feed the new identity is to talk about it a lot. Tell friends and family about your new identity. Then the social pressure, even if just internally felt, helps you take it on. We are deeply social beings. Our identities are largely interpersonal. Use that.

Come up with a story of how you changed your identity

We live in self-narratives. Do it deliberately.

You can think “I’ve actually always been [new identity]”.

Another good one is to anchor it to a particular day. For example: "I was thinking about it one day, and I realized that actually, I'm going to be [new identity]."

For me, it was sitting out in the woods in the summer of 2020, getting bitten by a few mosquitoes. And I thought to myself: this is the day. I’m deciding to no longer be bothered by mosquitoes. And since then it’s been true.

Important: it has to be believable to you. If you don’t find it believable, it won’t work.

Pair it with strong emotions

We learn something more solidly if it’s paired with a strong emotion. PTSD is this mechanism running in the wrong direction: the lesson sticks forever because the fear was overwhelming. MDMA therapy is the same trick run in reverse. Emotional lessons stick more easily because they arrive wrapped in overwhelming feelings of love and safety.

Of course, therapeutic drugs are overkill for most identity changes. You can also just psych yourself up, invent a small ritual, or make the declaration somewhere awe inspiring, like the top of a mountain. This can help it stick long term.

Starve the previous identity

The biggest thing here is to simply not talk about the old identity. For example, whenever mosquitoes were around, I used to say “oh, I can’t stand mosquitoes. They drive me nuts.”

I stopped saying that. Out loud.

What about your internal thoughts? It's well established that you cannot suppress thoughts. Trying backfires. What you can do, though, is apply mindfulness when a thought from the old identity shows up. Acknowledge the thought, maybe give it a label (e.g. “there’s a thought” or “there’s the old identity”), then re-focus. Usually on whatever you're doing at the moment. Or, if you like, on the new identity and its story.

Important limitations to the technique

Like every psychological technique, this one doesn't work on everything. Some things about yourself are unchangeable. For example, I tried for years to be OK with polyamory and eventually had to admit that that was an aspect I couldn’t change about myself. Some things might have a cause that identity doesn’t affect, such as your environment or nutritional deficiencies.

So there you go. This is how you change your identity:

• Reinforce the new identity
  • Look for confirming evidence and arguments
  • Talk about it
  • Come up with a narrative of how your identity changed
  • Pair it with strong emotions
• Starve the old identity
  • Don’t talk about it
  • Acknowledge the thoughts, then re-focus

This is cross-posted from my Substack