Don’t Let Your Degree Or Current Position Limit Your Abilities
Do you remember the story of the centurion that sent messengers to Jesus to come to heal his beloved servant?
For the sake of those of you who do not know, let me narrate what happened. This man who was a very good person and had caught the attention of the people who were around him, had one servant that he loved very well.
But this very servant fell seriously sick and he needed to save the life of his servant because he was going to lose someone precious if he didn’t do anything about it.
Hence, the centurion sent people to Jesus to plead with him to come and heal his bedridden servant. The messengers on reaching Jesus told him about how good and faithful this centurion has been.
They didn’t cease mentioning his good deeds which included building a temple for the people. After they had told Jesus, he quickly rushed to go to the centurion’s house to save his servant because of all his good deeds that were on the mouth of others.
However, when the centurion heard that Jesus was on his way to his house, he sent forth people to Jesus with the message
“I am not worthy that you may come to my house, just speak a word that my servant may live”
Because of this Jesus didn’t go to his house again and even though he spoke a word to heal his servant, he missed the opportunity of meeting Jesus and who knows what other things he could have achieved having met Jesus in person.
This is how most people are driving away their chances and especially doing less than they can actually do in life.
Because you are in a certain position or bear a certain title does not mean you cannot do a particular thing or can’t learn to do that thing.
I have heard on a number of occasions where people said, I can’t do this because I am not the this.
For example, a number of nurses have said “I can’t do this because I am not the doctor”.
You look into it and it is not something to difficult to do and they actually have the ability to do it or learn it but just because they are not the Doctor, they won’t even bother to try it out.
I am always baffled when people ask me “Are you not a pharmacist so how come you know so much about computers and the likes?”.
I smile and in my mind, I tell myself that my pharmacy title is not going to limit me to the practice of Pharmacy alone. If I can do it, I will learn it irrespective of my position or title.
Don’t let your degree or current position limit your abilities.
Dr. Ehoneah Obed (Pharmacist, Software Engineer, Health Informatician, Founder)
My work focuses on identity engineering, which is the deliberate process of designing and updating who you are, personally and professionally.
Most people experience identity as something fixed or accidental. It is shaped by parents, early success or failure, education, and society’s definition of what a “good life” looks like. They adapt to it rather than questioning it. What most people do not realize is that identity is not just something you discover. It is something you can actively engineer.
Personal identity engineering is about gaining control over how your beliefs, values, and self-concept are formed and reinforced.
Professional identity engineering is about translating that internal identity into skills, work, leverage, and visible contribution in the world.
When people feel stuck, it is rarely because they lack motivation or talent. It is because they are trying to change outcomes while leaving the underlying identity system untouched. Careers stall. Confidence collapses. Direction feels unclear. The system keeps producing the same results.
I learned this by rebuilding myself multiple times.
I trained as a pharmacist for six years. While working in hospitals, I began learning to code alongside my job. That led to building real software, selling products, transitioning into software engineering, completing a master’s degree in health informatics at the University of Toronto, and now building startups and systems full time. Each transition followed the same pattern. My identity did not change because I thought differently. It changed because I took specific actions that produced new evidence, and that evidence forced a new story about who I was capable of being.
That is the core mechanism behind identity engineering.
Identity updates when you intentionally generate evidence that contradicts your old self-image, then compound that evidence until the old identity can no longer run the system.
This blog is where I document that process. I write about how to design identity experiments that are small, controlled, and reversible. How to build proof-of-work that changes both how you see yourself and how the world responds to you. How to move forward without waiting for clarity, confidence, or permission.
This is not motivation and it is not coaching. It is systems thinking applied to human change.
I also write The Ledger, a weekly record of systems and experiments for building a life you own.
And I built the Identity Audit, a diagnostic tool that helps you understand your current identity state before you attempt to change it.
I am not presenting a finished theory. I am engineering this in real time, using my own life as the test environment. If you want more agency over who you are becoming, both personally and professionally, you are in the right place.
