Who are you?
Don’t rush to respond to that question. Who are you, really? Not your name or what you do, but who you are at the core of your being.
If I’m honest, for the longest time it was easier to list everything I did to define who I was. The titles, roles, and responsibilities I carried became intertwined with my sense of identity. I’ve learned how fragile that foundation can be. Because if what we do is taken away, what’s left of who we are?
To a certain extent, I believe that this mindset often develops from the way we grow up. Let me explain. I’d bet that even though you and I come from different cultures and upbringings, we were both asked the same question over and over again as kids: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
At five years old? I changed my favorite color every other week, how could I possibly know who I wanted to be? At fifteen? I was barely learning how to be human. Let’s be honest, you were too. In fact, we still are. If I listed all the times my answer to that question changed, I’d never finish this blog.
Gen X, baby boomers, millennials, Gen Z, different generations, same question:
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Let me be clear. Trying to figure out your future, college, career, purpose, is not wrong. But it can produce toxic results when motivated by the wrong things.
I grew up in a family marked by dysfunction and a deep need for significance. Older generations “missed the mark” in major ways, and it was placed on us, the younger ones, to be the “hope of the family,” as if we were supposed to redeem and restore the family name, whatever that meant.
Will this person end up the same way? Will they become somebody?
Let me tell you, the pressure to perform and achieve damaged my identity. I thought “being” was about “doing,” and if I wasn’t doing “well enough,” then I must have been becoming another disappointment to my family.
Growing up, I focused more on what I was going to do than who I was becoming. I felt the pressure from an early age to have my entire future figured out. Have you heard the phrase, “What gets celebrated gets repeated”? I saw that firsthand. I placed value in the validation I received from family and teachers for being a great student and producing good results. Again, none of that is inherently bad, until it costs our authentic selves just to get “there.” I needed to make sure I got there. Failing was seen as a weakness. Perfection wasn’t just the goal; it was the standard.
The years that should’ve been spent discovering my identity and developing my character were stolen by the fear of repeating my family’s cycle of mediocrity.
When I turned seventeen, I realized that performing was costing me too much. When people called me confident, I was actually the most insecure. When I had the most exposure, I was the loneliest.
Have you ever been celebrated publicly yet felt empty privately? That’s exactly how I felt.
I was doing well by most people’s standards. I seemed to know what I wanted to do with my future. To many, I was “winning.” But there was one problem: I didn’t know myself.
And when we don’t know ourselves, we unconsciously allow other people’s labels to become our identity. Boundaries blur. Morals get compromised. Confusion sets in. We feel lost. At least, that’s how I felt.
One of my favorite speakers, Levi Lusko, once said,
“When you wear a mask to gain something, you’ll have to keep wearing it to maintain it.”
I wish I had known that sooner.
I couldn’t change my first seventeen years, but I realized I didn’t have to waste more time avoiding the real work:
The work of getting to know myself
The work of healing
The work of understanding where my mindsets came from
The work of fixing my priorities
The work of cutting off toxic relationships
And listen, work takes time. It takes consistency. And it takes humility.
Let’s be honest: we could go through life faking it. We could copy who we think we want to be and pretend we’re already that person. But here’s the problem: even if you make it to where you think you want to be, you’ll arrive as someone you’re not.
Psalm 139 says that God knew us before we were born, and that’s the version of me I want to focus on. I want to get to know the Michelle He created, the Michelle He envisions. Because I’m sure that version is far more amazing than the one I think I need to be.
And the same is true for you.
So sit with this question: Who are you?
If you find yourself not liking, or not knowing, the answer, it’s not too late. The good news? You are the clay, and God is the potter. You are in very good hands.
Doing the Work
Where do your current beliefs about yourself come from, and do they align with who God says you are?
Is there a version of yourself you’re still holding onto that God never asked you to be?
Where do you need to set boundaries to protect the person you’re becoming?
