I am a super organized person, one of those everything has a place and everything goes in it's place kind of person. One of my favorite tools is my p-touch label maker. With this tool, I can actually adhere labels to things, so I know exactly what they are, what is inside, and what their purpose is.
While labeling things, can be useful and efficient, labeling people can become downright destructive. If you look back on the first paragraph I wrote, labels tell us exactly what things are, what is inside and what purpose they serve. Labels on people say the exact same thing about HUMAN BEINGS.
Let's say, for example, you label someone as a bully. Perhaps they were mean to you once, maybe even a long time ago, and you chose to adhere to this particular label to them. Perhaps you even chose to share this label with others, allowing them to apply the same label to this particular individual.
Now consider this, what IF they were just having a bad day. Can any of us honestly say we have never had a bad day and been mean to someone else? I know I have, more than I am comfortable with admitting. Regardless, that is a person that has way more inside of them beyond being just a bully. However they now have that label that is bound to follow them.
How often do we label others without really even knowing them? Labels imply that people cannot change. Labels imply that this one category is all that person is and their only purpose. Do you really want to accept the responsibility of determining who someone truly is. I know I don't.
What about labeling yourself? How often do you label yourself and find yourself living up to the label? I see people doing this regularly. Students who label themselves as math-challenged when maybe they just haven't figured it out yet. Friend's daughters labeled as clumsy, when they were simply born premature and have taken a bit longer to grow into their beautiful bodies (thank you for inspiring this blog post!). We all hear it all the time. I am just someone who can't lose weight, I am just someone who can't go to college, I am just someone who will never be happy...
Today I encourage to remove the labels, the ones you have adhered to others and the ones you have adhered to yourself. Know that no one is only one thing. We are all uniquely beautiful in our complexity, and all of us have the potential to be a bully sometimes or clumsy sometimes. The secret is to not let it define you or others. Be you and search for the differences in others that make them them. It is all these differences that make our world a beautiful place!
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