Reframe our negative thoughts

Change how we see the world

I’ve struggled with my mental health for so long that I can’t clearly remember when it started. The strangest part is that for most of that time, I didn’t even recognize it as a problem.

In 2020 and 2021, the world slowed down. Instead of racing through 200 emails a day and jumping from meeting to meeting, I suddenly had time alone. Looking back, I can’t even remember what most of those meetings were about. I barely had time for lunch back then, yet none of it seems important now.

That time alone period forced me to sit with my own thoughts. For the first time, I began to notice patterns in my mind that had always been there but were drowned out by the busyness.

So I started reading anything I could find about the mind—thoughts, awareness, consciousness. Anything people recommended. Books after books: philosophy, psychology, anything that helped me better understand how the mind works.

Now I wake up two hours before the rest of my family. Mornings have become the most valuable part of my day. In those early hours, I began collecting small reframes, kind of simple shifts in perspective that change how we see ourselves and the world.

Some of these reframes worked for me. Some have helped others. Some are still experiments.

But they all aim at the same thing: helping us see the world more clearly.

Who You Become

People often say they are trying to figure out “who they are.” It sounds important, but the phrase is rarely examined closely.

If you pause and think about it, there are only a few ways someone might define themselves. You might think you are your thoughts, the private commentary running through your mind. You might think you are your preferences, the things you like and dislike. You might think you are your past, the story that has shaped you up to this point. Or you might think you are the things you actually do every day.

Most people quietly assume they are their thoughts. Whatever judgments, fears, or opinions appear in their minds feel personal, almost like a reflection of their true identity.

But thoughts are unreliable. They arise on their own, shift constantly, and often contradict one another. Anyone who watches their mind for long enough will notice how much of it is noise—repetitive, reactive, and often disconnected from reality.

Building our identity on top of that stream of thoughts is a fragile foundation.

A more useful way to think about identity is through action. Thoughts may come and go, but actions leave a trace in the real world. They shape the direction of our life and gradually shape the person we become.

This is why the common advice to “find yourself” can be misleading. It assumes there is a fixed identity somewhere inside us waiting to be discovered, as if our real self were hidden beneath the surface.

But identity is rarely something we uncover.

More often, it is something we build.

Who you become is largely the result of what you repeatedly do. If you practice kindness, you become kinder. If you build skills, you become more capable. If you train discipline, you become more disciplined.

Character is not formed in a moment of self-discovery. It forms slowly through patterns of behavior, reinforced day after day.

In that sense, the search for identity is less about discovering who you already are and more about paying attention to the person your actions are shaping you into.

Over time, those actions accumulate. And eventually, they become the clearest answer to the question of who you are.