I recently took a week-long vacation—from myself. I didn’t go anywhere, no fancy spa or trip to a faraway ashram required. Instead, I let go of all the ideas I’ve accumulated over the years about who I am and what I do. Fortunately, Yoga (the spiritual path, not just the bendy poses) has a tool for that: Ishvara Pranidhana, aka self-surrender.

Our idea of “self” is usually entangled with external labels, such as job titles, relationship status, body type, what we love to do, having survived an illness or trauma. All of these labels get stitched together in our minds to form a sort of identity quilt. We wrap ourselves in this identity and think this is who we are.

That would be fine if things stayed the same, but our circumstances have this really annoying habit of changing. People who are single get married, and married people get divorced. A big-name Yoga celebrity known for his tricky poses has a back injury and now has to practice one pose—lying flat on his back. I once had a fancy job title at a big magazine, and then I didn’t. That hurt; I walked out of that big posh building in New York City and thought, Who am I now?

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This question is one of the big points of Yoga, along with helping others and generating peace. Yoga has a lot of ways to check in with yourself and see who you are now. Today. In this moment. And Yoga teaches us that who we think we are can change. It gives us the fluidity to become who we want to be.

An easy example of how we change is the most obvious one: You’re not the same person you were when you were a little kid. You’re probably taller and your body took shape. What you did during the day changed; you likely don’t spend your day playing with toys and watching cartoons, unless you work at Pixar, lucky you. Going from kid to adult brings along lots of very clear changes to the idea of “self.”

When we get to adulthood, the changes are more spaced out. Relationships, moving to new places, taking jobs, leaving them, taking another, having babies all mark change. But even within these big life changes, your ideas about yourself and who you are can remain lodged in place. Sometimes we’re so wrapped up in our identity quilts, we’re bound by them, tied up and unable to move forward. It’s like being in constant caterpillar mode, stuck in your little identity cocoon.

When I lost that big fancy job title, I thought I’d lost a large chunk of my identity. But as I’d learned in Yoga, I could use Ishvara Pranidhana and ask myself a question: Who was I before I had that job? I wasn’t any less of a person. I was just me, pre-job. 

If you’ve found yourself not being able to move forward in life, you feel stuck or that something needs to change, if you’ve decluttered your home to the bare bones but still feel like something needs to be done, try the Self Vacation. You don’t have to go anywhere, and it might even be more helpful to stay home. If you can take a day or even an afternoon off for this, good. If not, you can do it with business going on as usual.

Get a new journal and write down all the things you think you “are”—your job title, your relationship status, whether you’re a parent or not, sexual orientation, gender, body type, anything you can add to answer the question “Who are you?” Add anything that you feel has been a negative idea of yourself, like about body image, divorce, and those ideas. And those are ideas; they’re just more labels.

As you look at all these labels, the ones you like and the ones you don’t, you’ll be able to see their impermanence. They are the things that change, so they can’t define you. Your true self, your essence, your spirit, your soul, your capacity to give and receive love… These are the things that are real, and lasting.

If you try this for yourself, you’ll feel refreshed and renewed. You will let go of old ideas that are holding you back, and have fresh inspiration.  You will go back to work with a better attitude. You will feel more comfortable in your skin and more settled with your sense of ever-changing, evolving, growing self. And ready to make some changes that will only make things better.

Enjoy your vacation from your ideas of yourself, you divine light. I can’t wait to hear all about it.