Who are you?  Are you more than your labels?

If someone asks you ‘who are you’, how do you answer? If I was to answer with ‘Angela’ – that’s just a name that some people call me – but, is it who I really am?  When you take a step back and look at it, you realise it is really just a label.

I could answer this question with a huge list of labels.  When you think of the labels that you have used or you have heard used about you – are they of your choosing? Do you agree with them? Do they make you feel good about yourself?  Or are they perhaps putting us in boxes that then have other thoughts, emotions and or expectations associated with them?

I created the word cloud in the image above last year when I was pondering this very question.  Some of these labels were given to me by others (not all by people who were being nice to me), some are actually my past job titles or qualifications and some others are my position in my family or friend group.
While these labels may describe a facet of me or my personality, I wouldn’t say that they were the full picture. 

I would suggest that if you take some time do make a list of your labels – choose which ones you want to use and let go of the ones that don’t serve you or make you feel good about yourself.

The reason I was pondering this question was that I was re-reading ‘The Untethered Soul’ by Michael A Singer (and if I haven’t recommended it to you already I am doing so now! 😉).  There is a whole chapter dedicated to this question!  I invite you to ponder this question for yourself – and dig deep to get beyond the labels.  The results may surprise you!

So – who are you really?