A few years ago, when I was struggling a lot with depression, a co-worker said something that always stuck with me.

She said that was one of the big challenges in her quitting smoking was that being a smoker was part of her identity. She told me that if I’m ever to get past my depression, I would have to stop identifying as a depressed person.

What she said made a lot of sense, and in the past few years I’ve worked to eliminate that part of my identity. Even though I still have plenty of bad moods, I no longer thing of depression as something so core to who I am.

I just realized the other day, that I may be able to apply the same way of thinking to health.

But the tricky part is, I don’t want to delude myself either—I need to live the lifestyle that goes along with being healthy.

I’ve got a lot of change ahead of me.