In our lives there exist certain immutable elements which, in honesty and reality, simply "be" part of us. When we critically reflect on such "to be" or "I am" statements, they settle out as a very precious few.
We "be" born in a certain place. Whatever we say, if we were born in a nameless place of no interest to anyone, that's where we were born. Our birthplace offers no choice, so we be born where were born. "I am (be) from . . ." somewhere inescapably and unchangeably.
We live within the physical constraints of our biological sex. Whatever we may do to alter our gender performance, or surgically and hormonally our physical appearance, we remain unchoosing with the same biological sex. We can choose a great deal that surrounds it, but biological sex offers no real choices. We "be" male or female.
We reach a certain age, and aside from getting older, that's how far in time we are away from our birth. No matter what we do to improve our life or extend our life, we cannot choose our age. It just "be's".
If we find no choice about something that forms an inescapable part of our being, we "be" it, and that's done.
No equivalency exists between those forms of personal being and "I am a liar." Whatever number of times we may have lied, we can still tell the truth. We never "be" a liar. Even if we have lied countless times beyond all reckoning, so that we have no memory of ever telling the truth, each lie we tell still operates as a choice we make. It doesn't matter how unconscious that choice may seem, the choice remains ready to become part of our awareness. At any point, we can recognize the dangers and problems with lying and choose to speak the truth. Paradoxically the one statement that we might want to make as a statement of truth about our self, "I am a liar," would still form part of the cluster of our lies. We do not "be" a liar. We choose to lie. The wonderful thing about such a realization comes in recognizing that we can choose to stop lying anytime we want. Knowing we can always make new choices can liberate us from past choices and habits better left in the past. Such a realization[3] offers us empowerment of the personal kind.
We may not stop lying, however, until we critically reflect on the meaning perspective represented by the phase, "I am a liar" that we feel forms part of our self and our identity. However we feel about our lying, we will not make a new choice until we question the validity of that meaning perspective.
When we speak even more self-defining and self-defaming statements such as "I am stupid," we do even more damage to our self by making "I am stupid" an essential part of our identity, our self, part of our very being. As a teacher, I have found that many if not almost all of my students felt that they were stupid or, at least, feared that if the truth were known they could say "I am stupid" quite truthfully. It didn't cheer them up much, but there it was—deeply and painfully inside them. [4]