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Welcome to Life Mastery TV, a constantly growing library of resources for helping you to enhance and improve all areas of your life.

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“It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.” ― W.C. Fields

Labels are devices we use to evaluate, assess, categorize and sort pretty much everything that happens in our lives. Most often, these devices are linguistic or semantic in nature, and they can serve a valuable purpose—at least until we forget that they’re just models or representations. In the extreme, we become so forgetful that we actually believe our labels are the things they were meant to describe! For example, you might hear a phrase such as “the human brain is x, y and z”—and then, without even thinking about it, you may find yourself expecting everyone with a brain (including yourself) to behave in a way that is consistent with that statement.

Yes, a label can be useful—up to a point. But when we forget the fact that we have constructed the label as a representation for the thing, that’s when problems really start to show up. As Alfred Korzybski reminds us so succinctly, “the map is not the territory”.

In this episode, I have invited my friend Sara Jane back to Life Mastery TV to discuss this subject in some detail. We are going to look at labels from a variety of perspectives, with the intention of reminding ourselves about their limited usefulness.

Here are some of the things we’ll be discussing:

What Is a Label?

We’ll talk about what a label is and what it represents—and while we’re at it we’ll take a look at why we use labels in the first place.

Self-Labeling

We all have ways of describing ourselves to other people. When people ask us, “Who are you?”, we seem to have a whole encyclopedia of answers at the ready. But the question is, are any of these labels accurate or correct?

Labels, Labels Everywhere

If you look closely, you’ll see labels showing up in virtually every area of your life, and some of those labels may cross over into other areas of your life as well. How useful are these labels, and how do they limit our perspectives and behaviors?

Using Labels Responsibly

Let’s find out just how useful labels are, and get a sense for when they no longer serve us. Then, let’s consider some ways for reminding ourselves about their limitations, so that we can be more open to the truth of what really is.