We label or brand ourselves and those around us all the time. We set a certain tagline for each other and identify that person in that way itself. It aids in the separation of situations and behavior. People get labelled all the time and it’s become very common in today’s world.

You might be surprised at how many times you label items on a typical day. You establish labels based on hasty judgments about the people you meet and yourself, in addition to labelling the items around you or the day of the week. You might consider someone a terrible driver if they cut you off in traffic. Being late for a meeting may lead you to believe a co-worker is a slacker. You may classify yourself as stupid if you make a mistake on a report.

For instance, let’s say someone in your office is late every day. The person gets the ‘always late’ label on him by his co-workers or his boss too. We don’t wait to understand, the reason behind him being late. We just brand him without thinking twice. We start making jokes about that person, we begin to take his example when telling others to not be late. There’s a mistake from both the sides but none of the parties makes the effort to change it.

At the same time, let’s say the person is always early and on time and never late. We tend to take him more seriously and look up to that person. The label to that person would be, serious in life, professional, perfect, etc. This person starts becoming the example that is set in the office. He becomes the example, to which others are made to live up to.

We can’t tell you if labelling someone or yourself is right or wrong. Some people lose confidence when they get certain tag-lines attached to themselves. Some take it up as a challenge and motivate themselves to work better.  It’s about how you take things; the truth is there is always a story behind why people behave the way they do and there’s nothing wrong in knowing both sides of a story.