What Label Describes You? - Grasshopper

Have you labeled yourself? Has someone else labeled you? The answer to both questions is "yes."

But here's the raw reality: You are not that label. You’re not who you profess to be, nor are you the bumper sticker others have given you.

If you define yourself with a label, you have mislabeled who you are.
 
Just notice how often people argue about a label that’s been ascribed to them. They are correct. They’re not that label.  

We name things in an attempt to order our world. When everything fits into our neat little box, we are satisfied with the world order. When they don’t fit, which is most of the time, we rail against reality.
 
Labeling yourself or someone else goes counter to what is: namely that you can’t be accurately named. 

It reminds me of the teaching of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu: "The Tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao." It was his way of saying that the Tao (the way) is an intuitive truth, not one you can understand by logic and labeling.

Danish theologian Kierkegaard said, "Once you label me, you negate me." The inference being, that labeling someone reduces them to a meager definition. It restricts their humanity and their ability to change.
 
Now here’s the good news: When you discover what’s underneath all the labels, you reach a place where all the naming ceases.

Prove it to yourself. Just think back on a moment in your life when your breath was taken away by something. In that moment, you weren’t labeling the experience; you were inside it.
 
All labeling happens after the experience. It’s how our brain works. The label is not the experience. If you don’t believe that, try eating the menu the next time you’re out to dinner. 
 
You may not like that you’re not the magnificent or disparaging label you’ve given yourself or others have bestowed upon you. That’s like liking or not liking the Tooth Fairy. He/she's not real and neither are your labels.
 
So the recommendation is this. Start peeling your labels off one-by-one and begin to experience the vibrant life beneath your life story. 

It’s there that you'll discover what that schoolyard ditty really meant: "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names will never hurt me."
 
All the best,