If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition;
if you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.

– Padmasambhava

You are not hard working. You are not lazy. You are not a World Champion. You are not an underdog. You are not a player. You are not hopeless with women. You are not a brilliant leader. You are not a floundering employee.

You are what you’re currently doing. Others will constantly be labeling you, categorizing you, and dividing you up into politically correct chunks. But from your inner spirit looking outward, the only meaningful identity you have is the Now Identity.

Death by a Thousand Labels

Labels are a convenient communication tool. In just a few words they tell someone a lot about you. More specifically, they tell someone a lot about your past. Unfortunately, describing ourselves based on past events often binds us to these definitions in the present, even when aligning with those labels is to our disadvantage. A guy who thinks of himself as a “loser with women” is not only saying something about his life so far, but influencing his present actions.

When we let our labels lead us, we live a lie. Our needs and interests change, but our labels stay the same, so our actions stay consistent to help preserve the myth. We start swimming against our own current, and slowly get dragged under.

Choosing instead to define yourself by your actions in the present moment is a powerful statement about how you interact with the world. It vaccinates you against the deadly power of labels, as others apply them. It means that anything you wish to be, you are, if you do it right now. In fact, the only way to be anything is to be it in the Now, because anything outside this moment is a figment of your imagination. If you want to be a person who is deeply engaged in their work, then dive into a task right this moment. If you want to be “good with women”, then be that right now by getting out of your house and meeting people.

The expression “Do It Now!” gets repeated a lot in personal development literature. In the context of the Now Identity, this isn’t just a suggestion to get off your ass. It means, literally, that the only useful definition of “being [anything]” means being it right now.

The Now Identity vs. The Egoic Identity

You are likely the only person aware of your Now Identity. For example, if someone asks you, “Who are you?”, you wouldn’t respond “I am eating a Big Mac!”, even if that’s what you’re currently doing. The Now Identity is a tool meant to serve only you. Other people probably won’t notice the moment-to-moment shifts your Now Identity makes, so they’ll still refer to you by your past actions. If you made a $500,000 mistake a few months ago, they’re still going to see the cloud floating over your head and talk to you in lowered tones. If you’ve spent the last several months unemployed, and stumbled your way into a half-ass job that makes your university degree look like wasted effort, your family might still be upset with you.

This label collection–you as the sum of your previous actions–is your egoic identity. But it is not real, and it doesn’t help you in any way in the present moment. While relating to people in egoic terms is practical (to avoid weird Hamburglar comments like above, for example :) the egoic identity is useless on the playing field. The label of “World Champion” does not guarantee you a win. And being called a “ladies’ man” is irrelevant if you grew a 50 pound beer gut and haven’t had a date in a year.

You are a hard worker the moment you start working hard. You are an entrepreneur as soon as you take action–any action–that leads towards your business aspirations. Of course, this also means that you’re a procrastinator the instant you take action to avoid more important actions. That “eternal instant” is all there ever is.

Identity vs. Achievements

So what if you want to become a wealthy Web 2.0 entrepreneur? How do you make that your Now Identity?

Your current actions define only the qualitative aspects of your identity. If you’re on stage performing in a play, you are an actor. If you’ve got a text editor open and you’re writing some code to build your business website, you are a geeky entrepreneur.

The quantitative aspects of your identity–specific measures of wealth, fame, or ability–are measured by the sum of your actions and various environmental influences.

Other People’s Now Identity

When you expand your awareness to include the Now Identity, you start recognizing other people’s Now Identity too. You stop relating to your friends and loved ones by what they have been and start seeing them as they are right now. You don’t cling to the idea that your boyfriend is “faithful”, “honest”, and “caring”, even when his present actions don’t line up with these labels. Instead of resisting the past, you dive deeply into the Now. Your interactions are informed through clarity and acceptance, rather than anger and resistance.

We all have two identities, one that comes from our past, and one that is defined by our present actions. Our past identity, rooted in the ego, is the one we usually refer to when we talk to or about other people. But it is the Now Identity that serves you most, in terms of changing your life. If you change something about yourself right now, then you have changed.

You’ve probably heard the expression, “You’re only as good as your last game.” But if that were the case, a World Champion would never lose. The truth is you’re only as good as the game you’re playing right now.

This article was inspired by two fantastic books: The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle and Radical Honesty, by Dr. Brad Blanton.