At various points in my life, I’ve been labeled: Israeli, American, dancer, entrepreneur, mother, author. Each label carried weight—assumptions about who I was, what I valued, what I was capable of. And for a long time, I let those labels define me.
But here’s what I’ve come to understand: identity is not something assigned to you. It’s something you construct, daily, through your choices, your values, and the stories you tell yourself about who you are.
We live in an era obsessed with identity categories. And while understanding where you come from matters deeply, there’s a danger in treating identity as fixed. When you say ‘I am this,’ you’re also saying ‘I am not that.’ You’re drawing boundaries around your own potential.
Chapter 5 of The Life You Choose—‘Who Am I? The Chosen Self’—explores this tension. It asks: what if you stopped trying to find yourself and started choosing yourself? What if identity isn’t something you discover buried deep within but something you actively create through the decisions you make?
When I left dance, I had to ask: without the label of ‘performer,’ who am I? The answer wasn’t hiding. It was waiting for me to build it. Day by day, word by word, I wrote myself into a new identity—not by rejecting the past but by refusing to be imprisoned by it.
This is what I want for every reader: the understanding that you are not your resume, your diagnoses, your family’s expectations, or your worst mistake. You are the sum of your conscious choices. And you can start making different ones today.
The most powerful sentence in the English language isn’t ‘I am.’ It’s ‘I choose.’
✨ Insight: You are not a fixed thing. You are a living, breathing act of creation. Stop asking ‘Who am I?’ and start asking ‘Who do I choose to be?’