"Who am I? Where do I come from? And where do I belong?"

Those were my words in 2008 as part of an in-depth news report tracing my roots back to Ancient Assyria. The two part series has garnered nearly 100K hits on YouTube, and was the driving inspiration behind the new website www.assyrianroots.com Why is any of this important? Because after all these years it made me realize how we, as humans are rooted in defining ourselves, whether it's through tracing our genealogy or ...labeling. The first thing people ask you is ... "What do you do?" Label yourself. Go on, label yourself right now. Tell yourself who you are. Fit yourself into a few labels. I was a rebel growing up. I loved burgundy lipstick and black nail polish. Then I fell in love with skin care after battling acne and became an Esthetician. I was also a makeup artist. Then I moved on to pursue a decade long career in journalism. Now I'm a former News Anchor. So who am I? And where do I belong when all these labels have been left behind, in the past ...some collecting dust. Right now it feels like I'm swimming in a sea of unknown. Scratch that, it's an ocean so big, the water so deep that the horizon seems too far in the distance to reach. But it's there, waiting patiently while my arms and legs help paddle me to the shore. When you don't have a TITLE anymore, you begin to ask yourself important questions like "Who am I outside of all these labels? And what can I accomplish without them? Am I capable of greatness after unhinging myself from the things that once defined me?" That's when it suddenly hit me. LABELS limit us. Labels limit who we are and what we are capable of becoming. Because we're so busy stuffing ourselves neatly into a box - for some of us literally (inside a television screen) we create walls and barriers, disallowing other things - which have the capability to make us better - to come into our lives. So why do we use so many labels? Some do it for significance. Others build a facade of importance around them to mask the things that are truly missing from their lives. A lot of us just fall into the societal trap of defining ourselves with titles and labels so large, they nearly become impossible to live up to. Whatever the reason or reasons, I feel like labels ...(and I can think of dozens to give myself right now to make me feel and look important to YOU) hinder us from being comfortable with who we are. Instead of hiding behind labels, why not define ourselves by the characteristics that make us who we are? What I want to strive for are the characteristics that have made people great leaders. 1. Honest 2. Trustworthy 3. A Great Listener 4. Sense of Humor 5. Confident 6. Committed 7. Positive Attitude 8. Creative 9. Intuitive 10. Inspirational There are plenty of job titles to choose from. In the age of technology, we can even create our own special niche. Everyone can be a blogger, writer, or guru of some sort mostly because the internet has given us a platform to make our mark in this world. Still these are merely labels we have carved out for ourselves to prove our significance, which is ultimately an innate desire for all of us. Significance. Importance. So while I patiently create my transformation from News Woman ...to ____ fill in the blank, I'm going to rest easy knowing that none of these TITLES define me, but merely shape whom I've become. The cold waters of the deep sea are treacherous - or so we imagine - most of us will never know because the fear of what lurks beneath those dark waters keeps us at bay, but for the few brave who faithfully and blindly leap into the unknown in an effort to rediscover, recreate and rekindle some of our childhood dreams, the vast sea of mystery may not be so scary after all ...especially when you've finally reached the shore. But maybe we never get there, and that's perhaps the point of this journey called life. So when a gentleman asked me the other night, "What do you do?" I laughed and replied, "Nothing. I'm just me." And that is good enough isn't it?