What would you do if you weren’t carrying someone else’s expectations?

So many of us are walking around wearing labels we didn’t choose. Labels handed out by family, teachers, coaches, bosses, culture.

Smart. Shy. Too emotional. Too loud. Too ambitious. Not enough. Too much.

Sometimes, those labels start as compliments.

But often, they become containers, boxes, or scripts. And over time, they define how we show up in the world—even when they no longer fit.

Why Your Brain Clings to Old Labels

There’s a reason it’s hard to change: Your brain is wired to protect you from unfamiliar risks. It clings to the known, even if the “known” is limiting.

The amygdala fires warnings when something feels uncertain. The prefrontal cortex spins stories to keep you “safe.” And the more you repeat an identity, even one that keeps you stuck, the more it becomes part of you through myelination, the neural wiring that reinforces what we repeat.

This is how people stay small. Not because they’re weak. Because their brain is doing its job.

But your soul is not here to live in survival mode.

You Don’t Have to Earn a New Identity

Transformation doesn’t come by achieving more. It comes by remembering who you really are, before the labels, before the pressure, before you were trained to measure your worth by performance.

In Scripture, there’s a story that speaks to this. Gideon saw himself as the weakest man in the weakest family in the weakest tribe. When God’s messenger found him, Gideon was hiding in a winepress, full of fear.

But the angel didn’t speak to his fear. He spoke to his true identity.

“The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”

Not “you will be.” Not “if you prove yourself, maybe someday.” Right now. As-is.

Because God saw the real Gideon beneath the fear.

So that greeting wasn’t a compliment. It was a summons.

And that’s how identity works. It’s not something you fake. It’s something you inhabit.

It’s Time to Let the Wrong Name Go

Myelination doesn’t have to just work against us. It also reinforces new (good) pathways and slowly sheds old ones. When someone calls out something holy and true in you, it sticks.

That’s how courage grows. That’s how you start showing up as the version of you that was buried under performance, perfection, or approval.

Letting go of an old label is not about shame. It’s about freedom. It’s about gratitude for what got you here. Clarity about what can’t go with you there.

You don’t need permission to be free, so stop auditioning. Stop explaining. Stop arguing for the small version of yourself.

You don’t have to prove and you don’t have to perform. You just have to return to the name God already gave you.

Because that’s where the good work begins.

Dr Barbara

Want to Go Deeper?

I go deeper into this in Two Streets Named Hard, especially Chapter 3, where I unpack the false self we build to survive—and how to lay it down so you can walk in the name God already gave you.

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