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I have a neighbor who lives just a few houses up the street, and I see him often on our walks. I’ve written about what a close-knit community our neighborhood is, and he and I have had any number of interactions, but every time our paths cross he calls out a very cheerful, “Good morning, Teresa.”

I wave back and say, “Good morning, Harry.”

I reminded him a couple of times not long after we met that my name was actually Tiffany, but it’s been a couple of years now, and I worry telling him otherwise at this point would only make for an embarrassing moment. Somehow he’s gotten it into his head that I am Teresa, and Teresa I shall remain.

It’s easy to laugh at this minor misnomer, but consider how often we may get into our own mental ruts of mislabeling, from minor issues like remembering someone’s name wrong; to our current sociopolitical situation, where so many seem locked into labels or identities that may hold us back from considering new ideas; to getting locked into an identity when we’re younger that we mistakenly allow to define us the rest of our lives, like “the smart one” or “the pretty one” or “the jock” or “the geek.”

Read more: “Identity and Character Development”

I got it into my head from a young age that I wasn’t an athletic kid. I don’t know why—maybe because I was clumsy with a growth spurt at a young age, or because I had some health issues that sometimes curtailed overexertion, or because I was “bookish.”

There was plenty of evidence to the contrary: I played outside every single night with the other kids in our neighborhood, sporty games like touch football and tag and kick-the-can, or just tearing through the woods together or building forts or skidding down the steep hill in front of our house on whatever found wheeled or slide-y item we could scrounge up and racing to the top again to do it over and over.

My siblings and I swam constantly, and in warm months my family camped at Lake Lanier, where I waterskiied all weekend long, often asking if I could “ski in” all the way from the island where we camped back to the marina. I had legs like a gymnast.

And yet I wasn’t “sporty,” in my mind, or that of anyone I knew—I was “the reader,” “the artsy kid,” “the drama-club kid.”

That characterization became so much a part of my self-image that it kept me from engaging in activities I might have enjoyed. I always wanted to play tennis and baseball, but never did it because “I was no one’s athlete.” On many beach vacations I’d have loved to join a pickup volleyball game, but who was I to join the “real” players in the sand?

Perhaps even worse, it made me downplay the activities I was already doing, standing in my own way of not only fully enjoying, but even taking myself seriously enough to fully explore my own abilities.

And I’m not talking about childhood anymore—I mean until as recently as a couple of weeks ago.

One morning, in the middle of doing my daily routine of sun salutations, stretches, and push-ups (which this “nonathletic” person has regularly done for years), I had one of those fireworks moments of insight.

What if I wasn’t a nonathletic person trying to do athletic things—but thought of myself as an athlete training and developing her skills?

Suddenly something shifted something in my brain.

I looked up the meaning of athlete: ”a person who is proficient in sports and other forms of physical exercise.”

Not only was my characterization of myself counter to the actual facts—with my decades of morning exercise, six years of regular strength training, weekly pickleball, and regular hiking, biking, and yoga, I would most definitely fall into the category of “athlete” by this definition—but I had been slotting myself into a limiting category with my reductive, misguided labels about who I was, and who I wasn’t.

How Writers May Limit Themselves

Thinking of myself as athletic almost immediately transformed my athletic pursuits. My pickleball game started to become more strategic and skilled. I’d been stuck at around five to eight push-ups in the morning for months; after this I crested twenty. I’ve been plugging away toward a chest-press goal of 100 pounds for nearly a year, hovering in the 70-80-pound range; after this realignment of my beliefs I took an abrupt jump to 90, and yesterday I finally got to 100. (These numbers may not sound impressive, but please observe my stick-figure arms.)

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all this happened after I broke free of limiting beliefs. Suddenly I’m not a nonathlete working against my nature to try to accomplish things I’m not naturally good at or forcing myself into a mold I don’t fit into, but an athlete stretching myself in my athletic pursuits, paying attention to what my body is currently capable of and pushing it to do more.

It’s the same thing if you don’t identify yourself as a writer. You’re constantly pushing through lava to try to earn a title you don’t yet think you deserve. But making a simple shift to owning that title instantly makes you a craftsperson practicing and honing your craft.

Read more: "When Will You Be a 'Real Writer'?"

When people ask what you do, do you tell them you’re a writer, even if you also tell them about your “day job” career, if you have one? Do you think of your writing as a career too? Do you call yourself an author?

If you don’t identify yourself as a writer you’re constantly pushing through lava to try to earn a title you don’t yet think you deserve.

If the answer to any of these is no, why not? Do you not feel qualified to call yourself a writer or tell someone that’s what you do unless you’re supporting yourself from it? Is it not a career unless it’s how you make your living? Do you have some false barometer in your mind of what constitutes a “real author” that involves some arbitrary external metric like sales or money or bestseller status or being published by a particular type of publisher?

Consider how these attitudes are holding you back. As soon as I started thinking myself as an athletic person improving her skills, everything felt easier. It didn’t feel as if I were pushing a boulder uphill, but rather moving the ball down the field a little bit further each time I practiced my pursuit.

Thinking of yourself as a writer, an author, lets you take yourself seriously, take your work seriously, take your career seriously, which improves your writing and increases your confidence as a writer, which allows you to grow and continue to improve your skills.

I’m athletic because I do active, athletic things—not because I win medals or set records or pass some arbitrary bar I have to hit in order to refer to myself that way. I do the thing, and thus I can claim the name.

Webster’s defines a career as “a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling.” By that definition, you have a writing career.

You are writer—right now, already—because you write. You’re the author of every word you’ve ever written. You are pursuing writing as a craft and a calling in which you hope and intend to build a lifelong pursuit.

You Are What You Do

But maybe we can take it even further, open the horizons of what we may be capable of even wider.

What if we didn’t even worry about labels at all? Authors know that good writing and story doesn’t simply label things like emotions or a character’s feelings, instead letting readers understand and experience them for ourselves based on the characters’ actions, behaviors, and attitudes.

Read more: “How to Let Readers into Your Characters’ Inner Life”

So what if, when someone asks what we do, we don’t answer with the label but rather our passion and pursuit? I help authors edit their stories into the best version of their vision. You write stories that shed light on the world or human nature, or whatever your purpose and mission statement and interests are.

What if we proudly identified not with however society or other people may try to slot us into a category—or we slot ourselves into one—but how we spend our time, day by day, moment to moment, in every aspect of our lives?

I edit books and help authors bring their stories into the world. I share with fellow creatives the experience and knowledge of our craft that I’ve pursued my entire career. I read. I lift weights. I play pickleball. I go for hikes in nature. I share my life with my husband and play with my dogs and try to be a good friend, good daughter, good sister, good aunt.

We are so much more than any label, and confining ourselves with them keeps us from continually growing, exploring, and expanding as artists and as people.

How do you spend your life?

No, really, I’m asking, authors—what do you give your time and effort and passion to in your life, not just your writing but in the rich fullness of your entire life? How you characterize your creative work when talking or asked about it? Where in your life might you be limiting yourself with a label, or with old messaging that keeps you locked into a groove that might be holding you back?

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