What only becomes possible when we see ourselves as something or someone?
When do we become the person we want to become?
More specifically when do we become the friend, parent, partner, leader, entrepreneur (the list is endless), that we want to become?
Is it when we achieve it?
Perhaps we could consider this for accomplishments. I become a gold medallist when I win the gold medal.
When is the gold medal won though?
It is a result of more than the race or event.
Am I most likely to become a gold medallist when I prepare like one?
If we think of becoming a friend or partner, when do we become those?
Likely, we’re doing the things we think are what friends or partners do, or the friend or partner we want to be does and our friendship and partnership is the ongoing result of these things.
So do we become the people or roles we want to become by doing the things that make up those roles?
What comes before the action?
Most likely, we have an outcome in mind, the person we want to become, that sparks the actions, the being, that gets us to the becoming.
So what if who we want to become really starts with how we see ourselves?
‘Real writers write everyday.’
That is the perceived wisdom that award-winning author and writing teacher, Elizabeth McCracken, challenges in A Long Game.
Despite not writing everyday, McCracken notes:
‘And yet I persist in believing that I’m a real writer. I’ve never doubted that I am. My work, yes, I have doubted. My work ethic, and my reputation. Not my identity. I write; I am a writer. My qualifications are that I say so.
…
If you call yourself a writer, whether you’ve written that day or month or year, you go into the world as a writer. Anything you see becomes more interesting because of your inquisitive writer’s soul….It’s likely to lead to putting words down on a page, at least a few’.
For McCracken she is a writer because she sees herself as one and how she is in the world is a result of this, and leads to doing the thing she wants to be, in this case writing.
So how does how we see ourselves shape how we really go about what we do?
How much of what we do is really a result of who we are?
How much of who we are is really how we see ourselves (consciously and often unconsciously)?
How does all of that compare to who you really want to be and to become?
What would you do differently if you saw yourself as the thing you wanted to become now?
What would you see differently?
Who would you be?
What if rather than seeing is believing, believing is seeing?
What we believe about ourselves, who we are and who we are not, will shape how we see and respond to the world around us.
McCracken goes on to conclude that not only does seeing herself as a writer mean she is more likely to write ‘but even if it doesn’t it can make you feel alive. Lucky. Luck you can make yourself.’
What is the luck you want to create in your life?
Who are you in order to create that luck?
How are you seeing yourself to create that luck?
Of course there are circumstances where qualifications are important, but in a lot of the aspects of who we want to be qualifications are most likely less important than we think. In those cases, if the only qualification you need is that you say so, who are you? Who do you want to say you are?
What becomes possible when you say you are who you want to be?
What do you see differently? What do you do differently? What do you think? What do you feel?
What would be possible if we could all see ourselves as the people we want to become?
Because to become who we want to become we have to be them and to be that we must first see ourselves as who we really want to be.
References
MacCracken, E., A Long Game (2025)
