You've been building an identity your entire life. But much of who you became early in life was put together by other people. So far, it's working for or against you. "Five minutes after you are born, they will decide your name, nationality, religion, and sect, and you will spend the rest of your life desperately defending things you didn't choose." philosopher and writer Schopenhauer said that. You think you know yourself. But most of who you think you are may not even be yours. You might be borrowing your identity.

The invisible process has been going on unconsciously for decades. You are the intersection of your parents' behaviours, your friends' tastes, and your teacher's opinions. Your parents passed on their fears, hopes and limitations to you. Your teachers told you whether you were smart or not. Your early friends decided if you were cool. Your first boss confirmed or destroyed your confidence. All of these experiences are your identity.

But it has been a gradual takeover.

And a paradox of the self.

That's why stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote in his journal, "I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others." People who do not have to live your life have changed your identity more than you think. At school, you become what gets you accepted. At work, you are what gets you rewarded. Online, you become what gets you attention.

It works. Until it doesn't.

You adjust your opinion in a meeting if senior management disagrees. You doubt your ambition because your parents called it unrealistic. You stop mentioning the thing you love if you get resistance. If you don't define your boundaries, your coworkers will put your time to work for them. At some point, you begin to think everyone is reasonable but you. But the accumulation of those stories you believe takes away a part of your self.

The self is "a mirror."

The danger is that a mirror reflects whatever is placed in front of it. If you're never alone with yourself, never conscious of what you reflect, you'll reflect back everyone else's face.

Most people are doing exactly this.

The stoic philosopher Epictetus understood this more than most. He said, "No man is free who is not master of himself." Most people never question their identity. They mistake self-knowledge for self-obsession (an anxious process of looking outward with a mirror). Self-knowledge questions your internal compass in life. What you value, want, need or keep returning to, even when it costs you. The greek delphic oracle's two-word advice, know thyself is an invitation to look within oneself. It's the first rule of conscious living. Before you can act wisely in the world, you need a fixed point inside yourself from which to act. If you ignore it, you will become whoever the world needs you to be. Agreeable. Predictable. Easy to label. Or convince.

You become a collection of expectations.

And absorb everyone's definition of you.

You take jobs that fit other people's definitions of success. You stay in relationships that confirm someone else's picture of who you should be with. You merely exist. Oscar Wilde was right. "To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all". If you learn early in life that the full version of you was too much, you are sacrificing your life. Over the years, you will wake up with a stranger's life. You become the high-achiever who realises they've been pursuing someone else's meaning of success. You become the people-pleaser who has everyone's approval and no sense of self. That's why theologian and monk Thomas Merton said, "People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall."

As long as you know thyself and understand who you are, other people's opinions or problems shouldn't matter. What you hear about your identity is not true until you identify with it.

Viktor Frankl survived the Nazi concentration camps. And still came out convinced that everything can be taken from you except the freedom to choose your response to life. Even in the most extreme conditions of his life, his identity was his to define. Because he'd done the work of knowing it. Most people won't experience what Frankl went through. But the challenge, keeping hold of yourself against the external pressure, is universal. Knowing yourself is an active process. You build it through discomfort. Disagreeing in a room where everyone agrees. Choosing the path that makes sense to you, even when you can't fully explain it.

And through pattern recognition.

The things that light you up. Sets your soul on fire. The people who make you feel most like yourself. It's a discipline. Novelist Charles Bukowski said, "If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it's your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life." Choosing yourself has a price. But "no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself," notes philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. You will disappoint a lot of people.

But the right people will respect the person who has courage, a point of view, a self they'll defend. Choosing yourself again and again is the bravest thing you'll ever do. Not once. But daily. In the small choices. In what you say yes to and what you walk away from. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard called this "becoming who you are." Actively constructing a self, through choices made with intention. The work of knowing yourself is never finished. But the minute you decide your definition of yourself matters more than anyone else's, you stop absorbing people's perception of you. And that, more than achievement or approval or anything external, is what it means to live your life.

It's the bravest thing you'll ever do.

You are making a radical choice every time you say "no" to a tradition, habit, routine or belief that doesn't fit or a path that doesn't make you come alive. Choosing yourself is a repetitive, daily act of courage. It is uncomfortable to disappoint others to remain true to yourself. Do it anyway. The resistance you feel when you defy external expectations is a sign you are listening to what your "self" needs. As Lao Tzu famously taught, "At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want." Trust that answer. Step out of borrowed identity. It is the hardest work you will ever do, and the only work that matters.