How I Define Who I Am: How My Words Are Reflected in My Reality

In the first part, I talked about the words we repeat to ourselves every day.

“I’m not good enough.”

“I’m unlucky.”

“People always end up disappointing me.”

These phrases may seem like simple thoughts. But when we repeat them often enough, they can gradually become a framework through which we see ourselves.

And when we go a little deeper, another question appears:

What kind of person do I believe I am?

For me, this question went beyond personal development.

It made me look back at who I used to be and try to understand why I had spent so much time caught in resentment and a sense of lack.

Behind Our Words Is a Definition of Who We Believe We Are

We use countless sentences to describe ourselves.

“That’s just who I am.”

“I have a hard time trusting people.”

“I’m not good at business.”

“I’m always the one who gets hurt in relationships.”

“Money has never really been meant for me.”

These sound like simple descriptions.

But inside those sentences is a definition of who we believe ourselves to be.

When we hold on to a particular definition of ourselves for long enough, even new possibilities can begin to feel incompatible with the person we believe we are.

On the other hand, when we begin to see ourselves as someone who learns, creates value, and can choose the direction of their own life, our questions can change as well.

That distinction became important to me.

Before trying to change our lives, perhaps we need to look at the person we believe we are.

The Question Neville Goddard Left Me With

At this point, one of the people who had a significant influence on the way I think was Neville Goddard.

What interested me most in his teachings was not simply the idea of imagining the future, but the deeper question of how we define ourselves.

People tend to think and act according to what they believe themselves to be.

And that definition does not appear overnight.

Repeated thoughts, words, memories, emotions, and choices gradually participate in creating it.

That is why I began to see affirmations differently.

Not simply as a way to “repeat positive phrases,” but as a practice of seeing myself as the person I want to become.

I do not believe that repeating a sentence automatically changes reality.

A sentence cannot act on our behalf either.

But the words we repeatedly say to ourselves can influence what we attempt, what we give up on, and which choices begin to feel possible.

In the end, perhaps the most important thing is not the sentence itself, but who we choose to be while we repeat it.

That Is Why I Repeated the Same Sentence for Months

Here is a more personal part of the story.

I study Romanian on my own.

My long-term goal is to expand the knowledge content I am building into Eastern Europe. As I began learning more about Romania and Moldova, their business environments, and their cultures, I also became increasingly interested in the Romanian language.

The fact that Romanian belongs to the same Romance language family as Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian, while having its own distinct character, also made the language especially fascinating to me.

As I studied the language and culture, I began repeating one sentence as a kind of personal affirmation:

“Iertarea și recunoștința sunt doar pentru mine.”

To me, the meaning is: “Forgiveness and gratitude are ultimately for me.”

At first, the sentence was also a way to practice Romanian grammar and pronunciation.

But after repeating it every day for several months, something interesting happened.

I stopped simply memorizing the sentence and began noticing its meaning in my own life.

Forgiveness did not have to be a favor given to someone else.

Gratitude did not have to mean forcing myself to appear positive.

Both could become ways of reclaiming the energy I had been spending on resentment and returning it to my own life.

From there, I began looking at my past differently.

I Also Began Looking Differently at a Betrayal I Once Experienced

Years ago, I experienced something that left one of the deepest marks on my life.

Someone with whom I had once imagined a future betrayed me. I had returned from overseas without a real professional plan because of that relationship, and what was waiting for me was the reality of unemployment.

For a long time, that experience remained inside me as resentment. I kept thinking about why it had happened and why the other person had acted that way.

Then, at some point, the question changed.

Just because something was wrong, does that mean I have to keep spending my energy on it?

What surprised me even more was realizing that the choice I had made at the time had also been my choice.

That was when I felt myself reclaiming ownership of my own life.

I could not change what had already happened. But I could choose where to put the energy that remained from that experience.

Little by little, I began reclaiming the energy that had been consumed by resentment and directing it toward the abundance and growth I want to create in my life.

That was when the meaning of forgiveness began to change for me as well.

Forgiveness could be less about doing something for the other person and more about reclaiming my own direction and energy.

From the Story of a Victim to the Story of a Creator

This change also connected with a meaningful lesson I took from T. Harv Eker about the identity of a victim.

In the past, I spent a great deal of energy looking at what the world had not given me.

Who had betrayed me? Who had failed to recognize my value? Why did my life have to be so difficult?

While I remained caught in those questions, I was missing a much more important one:

“So what am I going to create now?”

That question gradually pulled me out of the position of a victim.

Instead of constantly calculating what I had received from other people, I began thinking about what I could give to the world.

And with that, my own experiences began to look different.

Failures, difficult relationships, and wounds from the past did not have to be memories I simply wanted to erase.

If the insights I gained from those experiences could help someone else reflect on their own life, they could also become a form of value.

That is part of the reason I create this kind of content today.

Not to romanticize who I used to be.

I want to look at that version of myself with greater clarity and find something within those experiences that can become useful material for someone else.

An experience that once caused me pain can become material for a valuable reflection in someone else’s life.

To me, that is one way of turning the past into an asset for life.

Changing the Words Matters Less Than Living What They Represent

That is why I do not want to think of affirmations simply as beautiful sentences we repeat.

“I am free.”

“I have value.”

“I live in abundance.”

More important than repeating those sentences is choosing, in practice, the direction of life they represent.

If I say I am free while remaining trapped in resentment from the past, the sentence has not yet found enough space in my life.

If I say I have value but never put anything valuable into the world, that value has not yet found a concrete form either.

That is why I continue to learn and create.

I write, study languages, explore new cultures, and try to turn my experiences and thoughts into something I can share with other people.

That process itself is a way of bringing the sentences I repeat into real life.

In the End, What I Reclaimed Was Not the Past, but the Direction of My Future

I used to think that forgiveness meant making the past disappear.

Today, I see it differently.

The past can remain.

The pain caused by someone, my own mistakes, and the regrets from that time may never completely disappear.

But that does not mean they have to determine the rest of my life.

My own change began there.

Instead of trying to eliminate resentment by force, I began moving the energy it consumed toward other places.

Instead of continuing to think about what someone had done to me, I began thinking about what I could create.

And I also began changing, little by little, the sentences I repeated every day.

This change did not happen overnight.

It was simply the result of continuing to look in the same direction until, at some point, I realized that I was asking different questions.

“When will I finally forget that person?”

At some point, that question became another one:

“What will I build with the energy I have reclaimed?”

For me, that change in the question was enormous.

I realized that forgiveness might not be about doing something for the other person, but about returning to my own life and living it fully.

The Words I Repeat to Myself Eventually Give My Life Direction

Looking back, I can see that the sentence I repeated in Romanian for months was also pointing toward the same place.

Forgiveness and gratitude are ultimately for me.

That does not mean romanticizing the past.

It does not mean pretending there was no pain.

It means choosing where I will put my energy.

I am still learning.

I cannot say that I am completely free from every emotion connected to the past.

But today I know that when an old voice appears, I do not have to automatically follow it.

I can observe it and decide which words I want to choose in that moment.

And as those choices accumulate, the way we see ourselves can change as well.

Maybe what we need to change is not our entire life, but the position from which we are looking at it.

Will I define myself only as someone who was hurt, or as someone who moved through that experience and began creating again?

Will I allow the past to keep explaining who I am, or will I allow the life I am building to explain who I am becoming?

I choose the second possibility.

And I believe that choice can begin with something much smaller than a grand declaration: it can begin with the words we choose to say to ourselves today.

Words are not merely sounds.

When they are repeated, they become thoughts. Thoughts influence choices. Choices become actions. And over time, those actions can give direction to our lives.

That is why I continue choosing sentences that fit the life I want to build.

Because the words I repeat to myself can, little by little, participate in building the life I choose to live.