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The False Hope of ‘Rebrand Yourself!’ Identity Shifts
A growing subgenre of YouTube influencers and videos promises quick, easy hacks for reinventing yourself and becoming a “new you.” Here are some examples:
Identity Shifting: Your New Way to Reinvent Yourself (in 3–6 months)
How to Become UNRECOGNIZABLE In 90 Days: Rebrand Your Identity, Build Micro Habits & Glow Up Fast
The Ultimate Guide to Reinventing Yourself in 2025
How to Reinvent Yourself and Level Up Your Life in 2025
Hundreds of videos like these share the same characteristics. They’re from attractive life coaches or wellness gurus touting step-by-step methods for identity reinvention (e.g., “seven simple steps to rebrand your life” or “five steps to make your identity shift”). The central concept in each is that behavior follows from identity. When your mindset shifts—when you start to visualize yourself differently—your actions and habits naturally align with that new identity. As one guru states in her video, “Someone who identifies as an athlete doesn’t have to force themselves to exercise; it’s just part of who they are.”
No wonder these videos have a huge viewership. The method sounds like magic.
Identity Formation in the Internet Age
In many ways, these videos are just the latest expressions of the New Thought philosophies that have been around since the 19th century (helpfully unpacked by Melissa Dougherty in her new book, Happy Lies). They’re downstream from Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, various “name it and claim it” prosperity gospel heresies, and other expressions of the “think your desired reality into being” philosophy.
But the identity-shift method has gained traction in recent years because of how the concept of identity has been reshaped by the internet. And because Christians are very much shaped by these digital dynamics too, we can be just as tempted toward the identity-shifting mindset. Consider these two ways our understanding of “self” has changed.
1. Fast, Fluid, Fragmented Selves
In the internet age, we receive the world in hyperspeed, disconnected fragments of ephemera, quickly forgotten, hardly registered. Memes come and go in a week. Fashion is fast and disposable. Synthesis, stability, and continuity are anathema. Fluidity and disruption are the governing laws.
Naturally, we’ve started to fit identity formation into this grid. You can reinvent yourself as often as you change your profile pic. What you were yesterday matters little; the internet is about the now. Every day online is a new pseudoevent, a new trending topic, a new spectacle. If it’s not new, it’s rarely noticed. We think our identities can, and must, play by these rules.
2. Performative, Branded Selves
Another change in the internet age is how central performance has become, as well as the rising importance of “good branding” in an increasingly competitive (and visual) attention economy. Social media has made every individual an actor with an audience.
You can reinvent yourself as often as you change your profile pic. What you were yesterday matters little; the internet is about the now.
Meanwhile, the democratized nature of social media makes fame feel within reach. “Influencers” have shown that with a good enough aesthetic and savvy marketing, anyone can become famous.
It doesn’t help that celebrities regularly model identity-shifting as an expression of power and artistic versatility—with each album or project ushering in a totally different aesthetic persona. Is it any wonder Taylor Swift’s “eras” have made her the most revered pop star in the world? As she morphs from melancholy folk songwriter to a synth-laden tortured poet, to now a scantily clad “showgirl,” Swift reinforces the desirability of manifesting whatever new identity you desire—seizing agency, defying others’ expectations and opinions, and boldly reinventing yourself as you see fit.
Yet most of us don’t have Swift’s resources for rebranding. And the fierce competition for attention requires a rat race of constant novelty that is exhausting and demoralizing. If I’m not routinely grabbing the attention of people online—such that my depleted dopamine tank is regularly refilled—I’m insignificant.
External Reality Does Shape Your Identity. That’s a Good Thing.
Christians are not immune to the performative pressures of identity in the digital age. We should know we are not our own (1 Cor. 6:19) and that God determines our identity and destiny more than we do. We should have a robust theology of suffering that enables us to see God’s kindness in limitations. Still, many of us fall prey to the attractive self-help messages that reality is bendable to your will and that you can manifest your dreams.
In one video, influencer Jillz Guerin argues that your identity (which she tellingly defines as your “self concept”) shapes your reality. “You will never go farther than the limits of the person you see yourself as,” she argues. But what about limits that are outside your own thoughts? Reality is far bigger and more imposing than simply the ideas, preferences, and dreams in our brains.
Consider our physical bodies. We can’t control whether we have a male or female body, or how tall or short we are. So if we’re a man who wants to “rebrand” as a female, or a short person who wants to “reinvent” himself as a tall guy, is it possible to just think of ourselves as the physically altered person, to make it happen?
The body God gives comes with limitations (much to the chagrin of contemporary gender ideologues). As I’ve argued before, transgenderism’s rise in plausibility is directly related to the internet’s normalization of disembodied, avatar identity. Online, I can be a “self” unconstrained by pesky things like bodies and physical places. So we start to believe that the virtual “self” is more real than the actual, embodied self.
Reality is far bigger and more imposing than simply the ideas, preferences, and dreams in our brain.
Yet reality is bigger than your brain. Identity isn’t just something you manifest in a vacuum, subject to your whims and wishes. Your identity is made, over time, in a web of circumstances and nouns (people, places, things) mostly out of your control—largely given, not chosen.
This is good news. The (partial) uncontrollability of my identity—like the broader uncontrollability of the world—is a profound grace.
Formed by Others
A common theme in today’s “identity shift” videos—and self-help, therapy culture more broadly—is that you should only surround yourself with people who affirm your desired identity and avoid people who get in the way of it. Natalie Dawson puts it this way: “The people around you either have to get on board with this rebrand, or they have to get out of your life.” Popular books like The Let Them Theory preach a similar message. Purge your life of people whose opinions about who you should be don’t sync with yours. Only you can decide who you want to be. Be done with people who drain you because they’re not perfectly aligned with your soul.
Yet who we are is never wholly within our grasp to determine for ourselves. Every person’s identity is inescapably formed by his or her connections to others. We’re more textured and interesting people because of the family and faith tradition we’re born into, the institutions we’ve developed within, our cultural and geographical place in the world, our socioeconomic status, the hardships we’ve faced, the commitments we’ve made. I’m so thankful my parents, my spouse, my church family, and so many others help me understand who I am—and who I should become.
Who we are is never wholly within our grasp to determine for ourselves. Every person’s identity is inescapably formed by his or her connections to others.
We should rejoice that identity isn’t something we conjure up in isolation. And when other people in our lives push back or challenge our choices or self-conceptions, we shouldn’t immediately see this as “toxic,” draining, or an excuse to cut them off. Sometimes it’s precisely these pushback moments that God can use to shape us most profoundly.
Amid the crushing expectations of performative identity and attention-grabbing expressive individualism, it’s a huge burden lifted to embrace communal wisdom and influence over our identity. In a church community, this is especially powerful. God brings us together in the church not to just affirm each other as we are and as we choose to be but rather to spur one another toward becoming more and more like Jesus.
Kernel of Truth but Better Hope
There are kernels of truth in some of these “rebrand yourself” videos. The idea that change happens from the inside out isn’t far from Christian conceptions of sanctification—it starts with the Holy Spirit inside us, giving us a new-creation identity that catalyzes new-creation behavior. When Kim Foster says in one video, “If you want to change the fruit that the tree produces, you have to address the root,” it sounds almost like something a Christian preacher might say.
But there’s a crucial difference. In secular self-help theories like this, you have to do the work to “address the root.” You have to work hard to shift your mindset. It’s on you. But in Christianity, Jesus addresses the root. He transforms us. Our new identity is received, not achieved. We still have to embrace that new identity and pursue actions that flow from and align with that identity (not unlike how some of these “seven-step” programs suggest), but we aren’t the originators of the identity. God is.
In the same way that the body God gives is a gift we don’t create but accept, the identity God gives—through the gospel—is one we only have to accept.
What a relief!
What a better hope.
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