Why You Can’t Will Yourself Into a New Identity

Why changing who you are requires more than determination and how to give your brain the evidence it needs.

The meeting went well.

The client was delighted with the design concept, the timeline was agreed, and the project scope was clear. Nadia was wrapping up when the client made one final request.

Could she add a secondary navigation bar to the landing page?

Nadia immediately understood what that would involve. The wireframe would need revisiting, the responsive layout would need adjusting, and the change would add at least four hours of work that were not included in the agreed fee.

She knew what she should say, and her contracts clearly covered exactly this kind of request.

Yet when she opened her mouth, she heard herself responding:

"Of course. I'll make it work."

Afterwards, sitting in her car, she felt the familiar weight of frustration. She had done it again.

I describe Nadia's experience in Chapter 11 of The Freedom Success Formula™.

Nadia runs a successful design consultancy. Her clients respect her work, and her reputation for being accommodating has become part of what sets her business apart. She values flexibility and believes it has contributed to her professional success.

She has good reason to feel proud of that quality.

What she did not realise is that her accommodating behaviour began long before she established her business.

Before the success

In Nadia's family of origin, accommodation was an important way of maintaining connection and belonging. Anticipating people's needs and making things easier helped her feel accepted. Over time, her experiences contributed to an internal prediction about what was required to preserve relationships.

To stay connected, I must accommodate their needs. If I am not accommodating, people will be unhappy with me.

I call this an Identity Agreement™: an internal prediction about who we need to be or how we need to respond to remain safe, valued, loved or accepted.

By the time Nadia entered professional life, accommodating others was already a familiar response. She had been using it across different areas of her life, often without recognising the prediction influencing her decisions.

In business, that behaviour appeared to contribute to her success.

Clients appreciated her flexibility. They praised her willingness to help, and her reputation for being easy to work with became part of her professional identity.

The apparent success provided further evidence that accommodating people was a good way to maintain relationships.

At the same time, the behaviour carried a cost. Every time Nadia set aside her own needs or preferences to maintain someone else's approval, it required something of her. In business, that cost could be measured in time, money and capacity.

For years, the benefits appeared to justify the sacrifices.

What the brain learns about being valued

Our brains are continuously updating their predictions based on the outcomes of our interactions with other people. The brain notices which responses are welcomed, which are discouraged, and which ones appear to help us maintain the relationships that matter to us.

A 2024 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined how people learn from social acceptance and rejection.

Researchers found that participants learned from two distinguishable kinds of information: rewarding social outcomes, such as opportunities to interact with others, and how much other people appeared to value them.

The distinction is relevant because receiving something beneficial from a relationship and feeling valued within that relationship are related experiences, although they are not necessarily the same.

For someone whose sense of belonging has become linked to accommodating others, the approval that follows an accommodating response can carry considerable personal significance.

In Nadia's case, clients' appreciation confirmed what her brain had concluded much earlier: accommodating people helps preserve connection. Her professional experiences continued to reinforce the apparent validity of that conclusion.

In addition, every time Nadia accommodated a request, she avoided having to discover whether maintaining a boundary would damage the relationship. In doing so, she felt relief from the relational difficulty she anticipated, while also gaining the satisfaction of being appreciated.

In my work, I call these psychological benefits identity profit.

The identity agreement exists to protect something the person considers important. The behaviour it induces, the identity-preservation strategy, produces rewards that appear to confirm the agreement's prediction.

In Nadia's case, the anticipated loss is relational. Accommodating a client appears to protect the relationship, while the client's appreciation reinforces her sense of being valued.

The cost of that response accumulates despite the identity profit.

Why knowing the cost may not change the behaviour

In a 2021 study into learned avoidance, researchers found that the pleasantness of relief experienced after successfully avoiding an anticipated unpleasant outcome predicted greater persistence of avoidance in their experimental setting.

Earlier research published in 2009 also demonstrated that having an opportunity to avoid an anticipated threat could interfere with learning that the threat was no longer present.

These studies examined responses to experimentally learned threats rather than the complexities of workplace or familial relationships. They do, however, demonstrate an idea worth considering: successfully avoiding something we fear can make avoidance rewarding, while limiting our opportunities to discover what would happen if we responded differently.

For Nadia, each time she agrees to additional work, the client remains pleased. The uncomfortable conversation about scope and fees never happens, and she feels the relief of having preserved a comfortable interaction.

What she never discovers is whether the client would have respected her boundary, agreed to pay for the additional work or accepted an alternative solution.

Her behaviour has prevented the very experience that could give her the evidence her brain needs to update its prediction.

Over time, Nadia recognised that the financial and personal costs were increasingly difficult to ignore. She added clear agreements to her contracts, knowing she needs to protect her business. Yet when a client asks for something outside the agreed scope, she still finds herself saying yes.

Her conscious intention to change is now competing with a longstanding prediction about what changing might cost her. Within that prediction, accepting another four hours of unpaid work feels less risky than maintaining the boundary.

This is why I say that what looks like self-sabotage is often an attempt at self-preservation.

The behaviour tries to protect something valuable to us, which often speaks directly to our sense of worth. Understanding what it is protecting gives us a clear starting point to update the prediction by creating new evidence for the brain.

Giving the brain new evidence

The practical way to begin working with these predictions is to deliberately create an opportunity to discover what happens when we respond differently.

In my work, I call these identity experiments.

An identity experiment is a small, specific experience designed to test the prediction underlying an identity agreement.

The distinction lies in what we are trying to change. Nadia has already tried to change her behaviour. An identity experiment goes deeper, targeting the prediction that continues to drive that behaviour.

When Nadia decides she must become better at saying no, she focuses on the behaviour she wants to change. She already knows how to say no. Her challenge lies beneath the behaviour, with what is driving it; namely the prediction about what will happen to the relationship if she does.

An identity experiment would therefore begin with the prediction:

If I maintain a boundary, the other person will be unhappy with me, and our relationship will suffer.

Begin by choosing one manageable situation in which to test it. For example, an established client requests additional work outside the agreed scope. Instead of immediately accommodating the request, Nadia takes a moment to steady herself and responds:

"I can certainly look at that for you. It falls outside our current agreement, so let me work out the additional scope and fee."

And then she allows the client to respond.

Nadia can prepare for the discomfort before she begins the experiment. Maintaining a boundary challenges an expectation she has relied on for years, so the discomfort is something she can anticipate.

If she interprets that discomfort as proof that something is wrong, she may immediately offer to do the work for free, returning to the familiar protective strategy before discovering what the alternative response might produce.

If, instead, she recognises the feeling as a possible response to challenging her prediction, she has an opportunity to maintain the boundary long enough to discover what actually happens.

The client may be perfectly comfortable with the additional fee. They may decide against the change. They may express disappointment. All of these possibilities, plus a few more, may exist.

Whatever happens, Nadia can begin examining the accuracy of her original prediction. Even if the client is unhappy, does that necessarily damage the relationship? Can she tolerate someone's disappointment without abandoning her own position?

One experiment will not necessarily update a prediction established over many years, which is why I encourage people to write down their observations. A written record allows her to revisit what actually happened when the old prediction feels convincing. Repeated experiences in which she can observe what happens give her opportunities to revise what she expects when she responds differently.

Try an identity experiment this week

Think about a recurring response that frustrates you, particularly one you have already decided you want to change.

Rather than concentrating on what you should do differently, begin by identifying what your brain predicts will happen if you do.

Complete this sentence:

"If I __________, then __________ will happen."

Be specific about the consequence you anticipate. The more precisely you can identify the prediction, the easier it becomes to design an experience that tests it.

Then choose one small, reasonably safe opportunity in the coming week to respond differently.

Make the action manageable. You are gathering evidence, not trying to transform your entire way of responding in a single encounter.

Beforehand, take a moment to regulate your body and mentally rehearse the response you intend to make. When the opportunity arrives, carry out the experiment and pay attention to what happens, including the discomfort that may accompany doing something unfamiliar.

Afterwards, write down what you predicted, what you actually did and what happened.

Include what you noticed in your body, what the other person did, and whether the feared consequence occurred as you anticipated.

Be careful to distinguish the facts from your interpretation of them.

A difficult feeling during the experiment does not establish that your prediction was correct. Equally, an outcome that genuinely carries a cost deserves to be recognised and understood.

Over time, the purpose is to accumulate experiences that help your brain make more accurate predictions about what responding differently actually means for you.

You are giving your brain information it has not previously had the opportunity to gather.

There is more to the story

We have explored what Nadia's identity agreement protected, the profits that reinforced it, and the costs that accumulated along the way.

Next week, I will explore something we have not yet considered: what did all those years of responding the same way help her become good at?

That question changes how we think about what needs to happen when we begin letting go of an outdated identity preservation strategy.

See you next week!

Much love, 

P.S. To protect client confidentiality, the characters in my book and newsletters are composites based on experiences and themes from my coaching practice. Names and identifying details have been changed, and no character represents an individual client.