Michelangelo stated that his sculptures were already present in the stone and all he had to do was carve away everything else. Our understanding of identity is often similar: Beneath the many layers of shoulds and shouldn’ts that cover us, there lies a constant single true self that is just waiting to be discovered. We think of the process as a personal excavation. We dig deep, getting under the surface, throwing away the extraneous, to reveal our everlasting self. And the tool by which we unearth this piece de resistance is none other than choice. Your choices of which clothes to wear or which soda to drink, where you live, which school to attend or what to study, and of course your profession all say something about you, and its your job to make sure that they are an accurate reflection of who you are.

Shena Iyengar, The Art of Choosing