How did you become your “I”?
Think about it, how did you first know that you were an “I”.
Who was your “I” relative to them, or him or her?
Is it not largely as a result of words? A never ending stream of data points which programmed the you you have come to know as “I”?
The “I”
Before there was an “I”, who was there?
You became the “I” you identify with through words. A relentless flood of words from way back in the uterus, long before you were an “I”, all the way to the “I” you recognise today.
Words are unique to humans. They have crafted who we are, they continue to shape who we are becoming, and they give context to every human experience connecting yesterday, today and tomorrow. For centuries words have been the master data points framing the human experience. Yet they remain the least explored, analysed or mined.
Strange isn’t it?
How would you know who “I” is without words?
Someone, or a group of someones started using words to describe you, to define you, to encourage you or discourage you. Words which liberated or limited you. Words which compared you to others who looked almost, yet not quite, like you. The primary difference being how these words described you v. them.
Reinforced words
The “I” you were becoming was reinforced by their words of praise, or discouraged by words of disapproval. You became wired by peoples repeated words. Their emotive words having an even stronger influence on the “I” you were becoming. It didn’t take long before you started using similar words to define your “I”, and in time that “I” became your reality, your truth. Unwavering and steadfast to the point of believing that “this “I”, is the “I” I am, without exception.
Yet if the words had been wired together differently, spoken with less anger or perhaps not spoken at all, how different would your “I’ perhaps be today?
No without these data sets, without words guiding you through the madness of life on this planet, you would certainly have been utterly lost.
Your “I” would have been formless, aimless, and as such, words, good or bad, have their use. However as with many useful things, they too may have an expiry date. A date post which clinging to them may no longer serve you or your happiness. Yet so many humans drag these long expired words with them through life. Remaining defined and possibly limited by them, with little or no reflection as to their continued relevance or usefulness.
A time to ask
And so there comes a time to ask:
Is it really me who believes that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?
Is it really me that believes relationships never last?
Is it truly me who believes that all men are …….., or all woman are ……..,or all children, all parents, all bosses are …………?
You ask how did I become the “I” I am today? I say you are who you are due to a collection of words.
Words, the most important data points in any humans life. Yet the same ones seldom, if ever, analysed with the rigour required to ensure that you live a life crafted for you, by you.
There comes a time to look at the data points which have so strongly contributed to your “I” and ask, what needs to change for me to experience the life I currently only imagine?
A collection of data sets
Perhaps the understanding we so often search for lies in a truthful analysis, a honest dissection, an objective review of the data sets which formed and informed us, all those words.
From your formation in the womb words are impacting you in one way or another. Words are used to describe the you people are enthusiastically expecting or perhaps even the your they may fear. Words are framing your life long before you have even taken that first gasp of air outside the womb.
You exist in words before your feet touch ground on this incredible, yet profoundly complex planet called Earth.
Who told you what you are good at? What you suck at? What boys or girls do, or don’t do? Who taught you about relationships, money, sex? Where does your prejudice come from? Who informed your opinions, your world view? Because no human simply jumps out of bed one day, suddenly as if overnight, filled to the brim with prejudice or racism.
Why consider all this?
I am not asking you to consider whether these words which have shaped and crafted your “I” are good or bad, you cannot turn back time either way. I am asking you to consider whether you have in fact chosen your today words for yourself and your future. Or do you remain shaped by years of intertwined data sets selected for you, not by you?
So I ask, again, how did you become the “I” you silently live with?
Now having considered the role words played in shaping and forming you, the liberating truth is that you can re-wire your future by changing these data points. If past words shaped your current “I”, your future “I” can be designed by new words. Change your words (oh, that includes those unexpressed words you call thoughts), and you change your future.
Yes, off course actions are also important data sets, however the action which matters most is taking control of your thoughts and words. This is the very first, the most courageous act required to re-wire your future.
Your life
The image below shows how words, in the shape of beliefs, thoughts and expressed words are all inputs driving what you either can, or can’t imagine for your future. These collectively either do, or don’t trigger the actions required for your imagined future to become a reality.
Alternatively the old data sets which constructed your current reality will be the only inputs into your future reality, resulting in the past simply repeating itself.
Let me listen in on your words for a moment, and they will give me a very good indication of who you are, and who you are becoming.
Who is your “I” becoming?
Are you you because of your chosen words, or are you merely a replication, a clone of generational data sets subjectively referred to as the “norm”?
Whose data makes you, you?