Mother, boyfriend, nurse, student, girlfriend, aunt, best friend, manager, vice president. All identifiers, descriptors that we give to people in order to offer them a simplified representation of who we are. Think about when an acquaintance asks you what you do, you take a moment and mentally run through your resume and then produce a brief synopsis which usually includes those identifiers: “full-time student”, “writer”, “barista”, “Dad”. These titles begin to define who we are as people, they begin to paint a picture of what we can offer. However, these titles also derail us because they offer us a definition of who we are and sometimes we get complacent with that meaning. We’ve received a sense of entitlement, so we get lazy. We stop caring about what it means to earn that title because we’ve already earned it.

The thing is when this comfortability creeps in it has an almost guaranteed possibility of hurting those around you. I always think about the first day of school, every kids gets up early they give their-self that mental speech that their going to stay on track, be amazing, study all the time, make their parents so proud. Fast forward to the middle of the semester and they’ve overslept too many times to count and their Netflix page has become the go to over their blackboard. This cycle is not only vicious it transcends into so many other parts of our lives. When you are not conscious of this fact, of this pattern you can so easily fall victim to it. You can so easily create victims from it.

I am a firm believer that every title you possess in life is an extension of a relationship. When you’re a student you have a relationship with a professor, a parent a relationship with your kids, a boyfriend/girlfriend you have a relationship with a significant other. The thing that people forget is relationships take work to maintain, every single day. You have to constantly earn what you define yourself as. The main problem that people face is they allow that title to define them, when its what they do with it that really matters. You have to push yourself, trust yourself, love yourself, celebrate the success, and address the weaknesses. Never accept the title, always continue to earn it, always to continue to prove why you have it.