The label somebody stuck on you in seventh grade was a rough draft. You hold the pen now.

Descriptions handed out in adolescence come from people with very little information, about a version of you that was at most two years old. They stick because they were said at an age when other people’s opinions felt like facts. Keeping one is a choice you are probably still making without noticing you are making it. It was never authoritative, only early.

Write down the label you still carry and name one thing you have done that contradicts it. Then act like the corrected version for a week and see who objects. Usually nobody does.