 One of the most important topics in personal development that not a lot of people talk about is how do you actually change your self-identity? Which just means the way you see yourself. Because I mean, after all, if you don't think you're a very desirable, sexy person, when you meet someone that you wanna date and intimidates you, you're not gonna act a confident person. Or if there's a job that intimidates you and you don't think you're good enough for the job, then you're probably gonna flunk the interview process. And in general, you tend to see that self-belief tends to correlate with self-success in all quadrants of life. But how do you change the way you see yourself and therefore the way the world sees you? Hey guys, Alex Hine, your nerdy friend and author of Master the Day. Now, one of the best ways to change your self-identity is through journaling. Now, the first link below this video, I've included a free journaling worksheet to help you figure out how to get your life together and create an awesome, incredible life. So, check it out the first link below. Hi, my name's Alex, and I am someone who historically has sucked at making friends. I mean, my whole identity was that I'm the invisible kid that just doesn't speak. You know, my own family said that they were worried about me because I was so clammed up and introverted and I just never really spoke. So, a big piece of my identity was formed in middle school and high school where I went to school with this girl my entire life from like whatever, second grade, preschool, all the way to going into high school, like eighth or ninth grade. And this girl was moving to Australia and she said to me, you know, Alex, I didn't even know we were in school all these years. I'm gonna nickname you invisible boy. So, invisible boy became like my scarlet letter, right? Like, I don't know if I wore it with pride or with shame, maybe a little bit of both, but certainly my identity was just, you know, I'm an easily forgettable person. And that was fine. I mean, I didn't really want that many friends. And I went home and I played video games most nights, like a lot of introverted quiet kids do who maybe are not good at making friends and also on some level don't even really care that much. Like, playing video games is fun. But for me, that I'm an invisible boy, I am the invisible boy, the OG invisible boy. That was my identity for a very, very long time. So now let's flash forward until high school, right? So we have high school, then we have college. I don't mind being Mr. Invisible Boy. But then what happened was eventually, you know, hormones start kicking in and you wanna date and you wanna meet a girl. But then I still wasn't really speaking to anyone. So I had not that many friends, even though I had a few and I certainly wasn't talking to enough human beings to get a girlfriend. And now for me, as this guy in his late teens, that was a really big problem. So now I had to figure out, well, how do I change from being the OG invisible boy to someone who is a little bit more bright and shiny or at the very least interacts with the human race and is not a complete misanthrope? So I came up with these three concepts. These three pieces to shifting your identity. So the first piece is you have to change one thing about the way that you think, right? Because my self-perception based on this scarlet letter that I really connected with on some level was that I am invisible boy. So my perception was I'm invisible boy, women won't notice me, most people won't notice me. I don't really interact with humanity that much. I'm a little hermit in his video game grotto. So I had to change one thing about the way that I thought because otherwise that was gonna be just the self-reinforcing this self-perpetuating cycle. So I just started telling myself, you know, well, what if that's just about the habits I've chosen? You know, maybe I just chose to play video games because it was fun, but it was less anxiety inducing than human interaction. And maybe I was just invisible boy because maybe one piece of me didn't wanna talk to people but maybe one piece of me really did want friends. But I was choosing the easy thing and not the brave thing which could mean getting socially rejected both in the friend zone and in the dating friend zone. So for you, this identity may be something around you're someone who sucks at math in a family where everyone's good at math and they expect you to be good at math because they want you to be an engineer. Maybe the identity is that you've always been the fat kid. Maybe the identity is something about your personality like you're really high strung or you're maybe too relaxed. Changing something about your identity starts with the way you think about it. The second thing for me is to change your identity, change one thing about how you are accountable to yourself. So going back to college, I decided that, number one, I wanted more friends. I wanted to be someone who consistently made friends anywhere you went because my self identity was the exact opposite of that. Making friends is hard. I don't wanna start over. I don't wanna transfer schools. So I had to do the opposite. So my friends and I, we made this bed and the bed was basically how many people can you talk to randomly on a daily basis? And whoever talked to them most on a daily basis didn't have to be a girl, didn't have to be romantic, just practicing being a person with good social skills who's friendly, who's not invisible, who can get along with people and who naturally jives and connects with people. So the person who had the most natural conversations and it was the honor code, they got 10 bucks that day. Then we upped the ante. Then if you talk to a girl you were potentially interested in, then that would be another $10 bounty. So we played this game and that kind of became the accountability factor because if you're alone, you can let yourself off the hook easily and often we do let ourselves off the hook, which is why most of us do not live these lives of ultra high performance in all quadrants of life because we don't hold ourselves to a very high level even though we genuinely would really want those things. Now the third thing is to make one change regarding a daily ritual, right? We come back to the master of the day philosophy, changing one thing you do daily in alignment with who you wanna be. So one of the things was naturally continuing conversations beyond what they would be, like socially acceptable highs and buys. So I would go to Einstein's bagels on campus in the morning and the person making my bagel, I would just practice this skill that I wanted to be better at. And I would say, hey, you know, oh, Janine, do you go to the school? Do you go to Clemson? Like, what are you doing? What are you studying? And then beyond just the pleasantries of high or buy, I learned Janine goes to Clemson, studies communications, wants to be X, Y, Z. And now I know a little bit about her. She knows a little bit about me. We've had a more positive interaction than just a passive one. And next time I go to Einstein's bagels on campus, we can just chat more. And I can ask how her classes are going and what's exciting her. So this accountability turned into a daily ritual. And the daily ritual was self-reinforcing about changing my self-identity because then, you know, a day later, I see Janine walking by on campus to a class and she's like, oh, what's up, Alex? Now in my mind, one human on earth knows that I'm real and I exist and I'm not invisible boy anymore. So it becomes this virtuous cycle, changing one thing about the way you think about the problem and accountability habit that is external to you and then a daily ritual that anchors in the new kind of person you want to be. And this has really changed my life. And this example being one of the most deeply emotional ones that affected me well into adulthood. So you can use this for changing your identity in kind of any aspect of life. But I hope this helps you today, changing yourself into maybe becoming more of the kind of person you'd like to be and you respect. All right, guys, that's what I got for today. Something super important. And again, check out the free journaling worksheet below this video. That's a really helpful way to script out what is my self-perception and identity and then the new rituals and new accountability methods you can use to become the next level version of yourself. All right, before you go, check out these two related videos right here.