I was channel hopping the other day and briefly came across an edition of “wife swap.” If you have never seen this show the concept is that two women temporarily swap families, for the first half of their stay they abide by the normal house lifestyle, for the second half the visiting lady imposes her own “rules”. The bit of the show I saw was in that second half. Whenever any of the house broke one of her rules she put the “offending” family member into a time out space. She also physically stuck a label onto them detailing their offence (e.g. “Potty Mouth”).

As I watched (and wondered how the researchers for the show had managed to find families at such opposing ways of living!), I thought more about how people often walk around with their own labels. Granted they are not the physical sticky version that the Wife Swap participant was using but these ones can have huge impact on our daily life.

Broadly speaking these labels fall into 2 different categories – those that concern a particular role/job and those that are about characteristics. I invite you to consider the labels that you walk around with and how it impacts your life. We’ll also look at some simple alternatives if you would like to lose some of those labels. This week I’ll be focusing upon the labels that concern a particular role or job and next week those labels that concern particular characteristics.

You’ve probably heard others do it when introducing themselves; maybe you’ve even done it yourself. “I’m an administrator/hypnotist/student/ insert relevant role”. You may be reading this thinking well I am, that’s what I do. And to a certain extent you are right that is what you do for work.

What’s the difference? One you are using as a label of who you actually are; part of your identity, the other as a description of an action that you do – i.e. you work as an administrator/hypnotist or you are studying.

I know this may seem like semantics but lets consider the impact that including such labels as part of your identity:

Many people already have preconceived ideas about how a particular role “should” be played. They then use this as a benchmark for how they do that role in reality.

This can have a couple of effects; firstly it often focuses on the process of how to achieve something, rather than the result. It may be that the process that this role “should” do works really well for you, it may also be that in other situations you have developed methods that will work even better for you. Sometimes people ignore these other methods because in their own head it’s not the perfect way that this role should be done.

Let’s take being “a student” as an example, the end result is surely learning and/or demonstrating a particular skill or piece of knowledge – there are many, many different ways, methods and processes to get to that end result. Sometimes “students” get so caught up with the way that they perceive how a student “should” behave to get results, that they ignore what’s worked for them as an individual in the past when they have been studying other things. They get caught up in playing the role of a student rather than focusing on the result they want to achieve.

This feeling of playing a part can also effect how comfortable you feel in your own skin. A fear of being found out as being a fake is a fairly common confession for those who want to increase their confidence. Which when put into a context of the use of labels with jobs/roles is not that surprising.

Another potential consequence of using this form of label is the impact that it can have when that job or role ends.

A sudden loss of job can be feel even worse if an individual feels that role was part of their identity. I know from working with people who have been made redundant or laid off that the reality of a loss of that particular income etc is the same regardless of how you thought of the role. I do know that those who had been thinking of it as what they did found it felt a lot better about the situation than those who thought about it as part of their identity.

Notice for yourself how you currently describe your situation. If you are using it as a label I invite you this week to play and change that description.

1. On a piece of paper write down the following sentence:

“A [your label] should ….”

Instead of [your label] actually write the label you have been using

For example:

A nurse should ……

2. For the next minute write everything that springs to mind to complete that sentence – you only have 1 minute so don’t waste the time by debating if you should write that answer or not, if it’s sprung to mind just write it down and come back to it later.

3. After a minute, re-read what you have written and notice the previously unwritten rules that you had been judging yourself by.

4. If there is a particular situation you’ve been stuck with finding the next step on you may want to ask yourself the following question:

If someone didn’t have to follow the rules written at stage 2, what could they do instead?

Bonus tip for if you want to try a different way

5. Decide upon a different way of describing what you currently do i.e. I work as a teacher or I work teaching 7 year olds.

6. Go and introduce yourself to 5 different people using your new description – notice the difference that this makes to both the way you feel and to the response that you get from the other person.

Enjoy playing and next week I’ll talk about characteristic labels

Love

Jen

PS Is there something that you would like me to write specifically about? My mind reading is a bit vague so do email me or leave me a comment to tell me about what you want to read about 🙂

This post was originally published on www.YourChangingDirection.com