Don’t let labels stick to you
- Kyle Snyder: Live on Purpose
- October 16, 2023
- 638
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
—Proverbs 4:23
In the 1970s a writer for the New York Times moved to California and became homeless by choice. He felt like people weren’t being real and letting their true selves out.
Now we all know that when we ask people about their day, they just say “good” automatically. The writer felt that was being fake, so he decided the only way he would talk to people is if they told him they hate him. In fact, a television network did a news story on him, and the only way the reporter could interview him was by saying “I hate you.” He was simply known as “the hate man.”
When I first heard about “the hate man,” I thought it would be sad to be known by that label. Even more sad, is he did it to himself. Being told you are hated over and over every day of your life is horrible, but being the one who encouraged it is awful. Yet many people today are living under labels that other people gave them. Now some labels are not bad, like Mr. Happy or the flower lady. Other labels are just downright harmful, like loser, good for nothing or waste of time.
Now some labels fail to stick. For people who don’t know me, I don’t talk plain. Some people might think my mind is not able to function like most people, but it can. I don’t let the label stick to me. I wish I could tell you all labels don’t stick, but that would be a lie. When people called me names, I used to sometimes think they were right. I started to work on myself, watching inspirational videos on YouTube, reading good books and talking with smart people. It was a long process, but boy was it worth it.
Taking off all the labels other people put on us is a long and hard process, and it will be tempting to just give up. There will be days where we feel like we are making good progress and days that feel like all the progress we made is all for nothing.
Part of getting better is having doubts that we are making progress. The brain likes familiar patterns; it doesn’t like new changes. That is one of the reasons it is so hard to change and believe we are making progress.
Taking off the labels is possible, but it is not easy. There will be days where we will think other people are right about us, but some of them are just assuming they know us, and others couldn’t care less about us. So we need to ignore the people who think they know us and just work on ourselves. I said how I read good books and watched inspirational videos, and I am telling you to do the same or put your own spin on it. The more we put good in, the more we will think about good things. It’s not a magic trick; it takes a lot of work. Think about it, and next time I will build more on this subject.