If I opened the lid on one of the canisters in the photo I would expect to find flour on the canister labelled ‘flour’. I would also expect to find sugar and coffee in their respective canisters.
What if they were mixed up and there was salt in the sugar container, would I still think the salt was sugar until I checked the taste?
When the label doesn’t fit the contents there is momentary confusion.
Have you ever completed a personality profile and found it describes you fairly accurately? I know I have. However those profiles are broad generalisations, and only go part the way to describing you at best.
We love it when the character traits and descriptions in our profiles are flattering. They are the ones we like to agree with. Whatever the descriptions, they are labels. As with all labels they may not describe the contents accurately or completely.
In 1905 Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon created a means of testing and categorising children based on their intelligence so that any learning requirements would be brought to notice. The testing was a starting point from which a person could then improve with guided study, coaching, practice and homework. The Binet-Simon Scale was to become better known as IQ testing.
In the intervening years the score a person receives from the IQ test has become a label to define their level of intelligence. It has less to do with the idea of being a starting point and more to do with it being a final statement about a person’s intelligence.
The danger is that people who undergo the test and have a belief that their level of intelligence is fixed can create very limited beliefs about themselves, especially if their score is less than 100 (the supposed average of their age group). Usually they are then labelled accordingly.
When I did maths in my final year of high school, it was a struggle. I would read examples in the text book and listen carefully as the teacher explained how to answer the problems. Still I would find the subject challenging.
As they got to the senior years of high school, my daughters began asking for help with their maths. When I looked at the examples in their text books, miraculously I could work through and understand them. Imagine if I had labelled myself as hopeless at maths and then lived that belief!
Any form of labelling provides at best a narrow description of a whole person. We are all so much more than any number of labels. Part of being more is that we have the ability to expand our knowledge, skills and understanding, so any label is, at best, very temporary.
If you must label yourself, useful words to describe yourself are words like ‘evolving’, ‘improving’, ‘discovering’ and ‘growing’ as they are generative. They imply that you are continually moving forward and improving. Those are the types of words that are worth buying in to.
What are the labels you apply to yourself as a golfer? Are they helpful or not? If they are not helpful, how could they be altered so they are more generative? Remember to be careful with labels, some of them are sticky.
Be careful what you think about yourself because you will act according to that belief and get the appropriate results. If the results you are after require different thinking about yourself, what is that different thinking?