If it were easy for people to redefine their identity to what they thought it should be, more people in this world would realign with what they really wanted out of life. The challenge required to realign one’s life is what separates the good from the great. To create a new identity for ourselves requires new habits, new experiences and releasing the past.
We are usually able to jump into something new, to try it out, or see what it’s like, but the difficulty comes from releasing past habits that bring our ego comfort. What’s known by the human organism is wedged into our identity like a frequented trail. We literally create new pathways in our brain when we do new things. Think of how people feel at a crossroads with a path that looks well traveled versus one that looks relatively new. Without information about either trail, people are more likely to choose the one that is better traveled because the number of people that went down the path in the past seems to indicate that it’s the better of the two.
However, this is hardly the case! The percentage of Americans that are obese is roughly forty percent versus a staggering twelve percent of Americans that can be considered metabolically healthy. The better travelled path is obesity, but does that make it the better choice? How often is it a better decision to walk the same path as the majority? If it requires discipline to achieve what we want, and that is a difficult investment to make, then will the majority of people choose discipline over comfort?
In general, we need a shift in our society’s ideals and reward system, but that always begins with changing our own minds. The collective is a reflection of the aggregation of the people. It’s a larger organism in which we are the pieces, the cells. Communities can be likened to tissue, and states or countries to organs. Together we are the body, the organism that is the world.