Don't Fixate on Labels: Keep Your Eyes on the Horizon


I was reminded this week of how important it is to keep looking out at the horizon instead of backwards. Words help us stabilize thoughts so we can remember them. That's useful much of the time. But sometimes, those words transform a temporary problem into a permanent identity.

Therapists are not the only ones who offer us labels and invite us to own them longer than we should. Bosses do it, and so do teachers. Maybe you owned "messy" a long, long time ago (when it applied to your grade 2 printing). Maybe you owned "fearless" at a time when it applied to going for the goal in a soccer game (not impulsively leaping into a relationship or out of a job). Maybe you owned "analytical" so thoroughly that you forgot that the most creative people are often analytical too.

Don't go back to fight with your labels. Just take a look at the picture here and notice that if you said it was dark or cloudy, you would be missing the point. It was going to get darker, and then brighter again (because the sun would set and then rise again). Labelling a moment in a process is not a way to define the whole process.

You are a work in process. If you're going to use labels on yourself, make sure they are timestamped. Better yet, look at the horizon in front of you and attach a label to what you want to find when you get there.

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