Who are you?

This is a very common question that in reality is not so easy to answer. Answering that question is much more than just saying your name. It is so much more than functional social labels you identify with. Titles or positions won’t be enough to answer this question. All your ID cards together can’t answer it either. So, how do you answer the question?

You are your personal factors: your cognitive, affective, physical, and spiritual factors. I call it C.A.P.S. You are what you think and how you think, what you feel, what your body brings, and the essence that brings it all to life. But that is not all. Your personal factors have been interacting with your environment from the time you were born, and some will agree that even before you were born. Your environment changed conditions and this adds to the complexity of the interactions with your C.A.P.S.

It certainly doesn’t stop there. The interaction between C.A.P.S. and the environment… your behavior. Your response to the environmental cues and how the environment responded to you shaped who you are. Behavior and environmental responses are observable in most cases and often the focus of change. However, if you look deeper, the way you behave is guided by the way you think.

If you try ‘behavior modification’ without changing the way you think, eventually, you will fall back into the behaviors you are more used to. If you change the way you think, your values and beliefs, and seek new empowering life, your behavior will change with it. As a consequence, you are going to be well prepared to influence your environment more than what the environment will influence you.

Define who you are.