The Identity Statement

An identity statement is a self-statement designed to improve self-image. Your self-image is essentially how you view yourself—what strengths and weaknesses you believe you possess. It has been demonstrated that what people believe they are capable of accomplishing largely determines how much they will actually accomplish. Self-image is a proven agent of behavior control. When you truly believe in your ability, the self-image motivates the behaviors needed for you to live up to your expectations. The effect of self-image is one reason why 80 percent of lottery winners file for bankruptcy within five years of winning. Even though their financial situation has dramatically changed, typically the self-image hasn’t. For people who see themselves as not good with money, no matter how much money is given to them, they will generally find a way to lose it. Along those same lines, on February 10, 2008, the Clemson basketball team took the court to try to break a string of fifty-three losses in a row to the ever powerful University of North Carolina squad. Clemson dominated the entire game and led by sixteen points with less than eight minutes remaining, only to go on and lose the game by ten points. After being defeated for a heartbreaking fifty-fourth consecutive time, the Clemson team continues to host a self-image issue when it comes to playing the UNC Tar Heels. The Walk-In Runner Even from the first time Jenny (whose name I’ve changed for confidentiality purposes) showed up in the waiting room of my office in February 2000, I knew that her situation was serious. It was two days after I had given a lecture about drugs and alcohol for a school district in St. Louis. She was a fifteen-year-old freshman and had been in the audience for what she referred to as my “drug talk.” She was tall and thin, with long, straight hair, baggy jeans, flip-flops, and a long-sleeved T-shirt with the word Yes printed on it. Her hair and clothes were dirty, she wore no makeup, her eyes were red, and her skin was pale and blotchy. She looked rough, scared, and lonely. Jenny didn’t have an appointment, but I could tell something urgent brought her to my office that day, and she looked determined. When I asked her if she could come back in a couple of hours, she bluntly replied, “I’ll wait.”During that period, Jenny was smoking marijuana every day—or at least every day she could get her hands on it. She had never met her father and hadn’t seen her mother in more than five years. She lived with an aunt most of the time, and she was flunking every class except gym. Jenny was scared, and she needed help. She wanted to do better in school, and she wanted stop doing drugs, but she didn’t know how. I agreed to try to help her if she would agree to a couple of things: First, she had to start going to school every day; and second, she had to come see me once a week. I told her if she was late or missed even one session, I would not be able to help her. She did well for about a month, and then she didn’t show up for one of our meetings. I assumed she had given up and gone back to her old ways. The next morning, I received a phone call from her aunt. Jenny had overdosed at a concert the night before and ended up in the hospital. A security guard had summoned an ambulance after he found Jenny unconscious on the floor of the bathroom. Jenny’s aunt asked if I would continue to try to help her niece, and I agreed to see Jenny the next week. To my surprise, when she showed up, she looked better than I had ever seen her. Her eyes looked sad but not as red or lonely. She asked me for a favor: “Will you help me get on the track team?” Jenny’s grades were too poor for her to officially join the team, but the coach allowed her to come to practice and said that she could formally join the team if her grades improved sufficiently. After a couple of weeks, the track coach called me and reported that Jenny was a pretty decent runner. She started making it to school, practice, and our weekly meetings regularly. Her grades didn’t improve enough the first season for her to qualify for the team, but by the next season, they were high enough that she was eligible to compete. I continued to see Jenny for the better part of the next two years, but it was her track coach who really helped her. Jenny was a strong runner, and the coach pushed her to get her grades up. Over and over, he told her that she was a good runner and that she was smart enough to get good grades. Before long, she started internalizing what her coach was telling her. She started to believe in her ability to run, and she knew she could do better in her classes. She ended up graduating from high school with a 2.6 grade point average, and she received a scholarship to run track at a junior college. She eventually went on to make the track team at a Division I university and graduated with a 3.0 grade point average. She is now a teacher and assistant track coach at a prominent high school in Oklahoma. When I first met Jenny, she told me she was stupid and she wasn’t good at anything. Now she will tell you she can do anything if she puts her mind to it. Her self-image changed, and that is what allowed her to change her life. Self-image is internally constructed: we can decide how we view ourselves. The experience I had with Jenny taught me very early the powerful impact of maintaining a positive self-image. Each of us chooses how we see ourselves. Creating and using a positive identity statement will help you choose a powerful self-image.