Years ago I knew a kid.

He was seven.

He was visiting me in the woods of Maine.

And he arrived, unpacked his portable Nintendo, and announced with great confidence, “I’m more of an indoor-type person.”

Indeed he was.

He spent the week with his Nintendo, camped out in the middle of my living room floor.

His sister and brother and mother and some other friends and I all spent a bunch of time tromping around the woods.  But he was an indoor person, and indoors he mostly stayed.

He is, in fact, still an “indoor-type person”.

He is many other things as well.

But I have found that making declarations like that, for better and for worse, can be very powerful.

What have you declared yourself to be in your head?  How often do you think or say, “I’m not that kind of person”?

Not the kind of person who makes friends easily or has that much money or is good at cooking or likes adventures or….

and what is so integrated in your identity that you’re sure nothing could root it out?  Are you a geeky person or a beautiful person or a creative person or a disorganized person or…?

Our earliest en-title-ments come from our families and our peers.

Are you a bookworm?  An athlete?

Who said so?

Who said not?

What would you like to be?

Once upon a time there was a magician who appeared to (you) and promised you could be anything you wanted.  Which titles would you pick out of the hat if you had it to do over again right now?

Why not pick them?

I’m running an experiement right now.  I’m claiming “athlete”.  I am an athlete.

Because I like to move my body, I’m an athlete.

Because I like to stretch my phyiscal abilities I’m an athlete.

I am an athlete.

Right now.

What are you?

#Iclaim

(and are you an athlete?  Tell us on Twitter!  #Iamanathlete)