We all wake up each morning with a personal vision of ourselves. We look in the mirror and see ourselves staring back, with bleary eyes and messy hair. When we see the way we look, we immediately set about improving our appearance. We shower, shave, wash, comb our hair, put on makeup if we are women, and make ourselves smell good. Before we leave the house we put on some appropriate clothing and head out to face the day. Because we have done all the right things for our physical being, we believe all is well with the world...
But what about our emotional and psychological beings?
We all have a personal vision of how we present ourselves to others. We think we are forceful, bashful, aggressive or nice. We see ourselves as smarter than some but not as bright as others. We think we are just a little bit better at our jobs than the guy in the next office but not nearly as innovative as Bill Gates or the guy who invented those handy little sticky notes. We like ourselves or we hate ourselves...or somewhere in between. We think we are highly regarded by all or wonder why we never seem to get respect from anybody. We laugh when we are hurt and we smile when we are insulted. At the end of each day, many of us have not accomplished everything we wanted to and most of us cannot understand why everyone didn’t agree with everything we said.
We all know what we look like, but most of us really don’t know how other people see us.
Only those closest to us will tell us what they really think of us but because they are close to us, they will generally only say nice things, slathered with big gobs of positive bias. Hopefully, they really care for us and are happy to overlook our shortcomings. Everyone else on earth is thinking that we are this way or that. They might think we are pushy, obnoxious, stupid or silly. They might respect what we have done but they might not like us at all for who we are. We can’t understand why some people are more popular than us even when it is clear that we are smarter or funnier than them. We trick ourselves into thinking we are popular with lots of fans, when deep in our hearts we know we really are not.
For the most part, our own personal vision of ourselves is carved in stone and nothing on earth can be said or done to change our minds about who we are.
Most of us have built a vision of ourselves that is based on who we want to be...not who we really are or even, who we are capable of being. We create our personal vision in our minds and try valiantly to live up to it. Often when we fail to live up to who we want to be we soldier on anyway, telling ourselves that we are as great as we thought we were. We find fault with the system, a product, other people, the company, the Government or whatever external thing is closest to the situation that made us fail. We are never wrong! Our vision of ourselves must not be tampered with at any cost and we will fight anyone who tries to tell us otherwise!
Unfortunately, if the results we are getting do not match up with the way we feel about ourselves, there is a hole as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon in the way we view ourselves.
If we are not willing to accept that there might be something wrong with the way we present ourselves and that we might need to change, we will be doomed to a life of frustration and disappointment. If people look the other way when we come towards them, refuse to make eye contact when talking to us, disagree with us regularly, don’t invite us to events we think we should be at or don’t return our phone messages, there might be a problem. Now is the time to face up to it and deal with it!
It is possible that your vision is flawed and you need to look into the mirror again. This time look into your soul and tell yourself the truth about who you really are!
Get a coach.
The road to true happiness is paved with self-awareness! The best way to find it is to talk to a coach. The coach can be anyone you trust to listen to you intently and tell you the truth about who you really are, without reservation. Listen to her, discuss what changes you might make to improve the way you present yourself and most importantly, trust your coach. Never aggressively challenge him and never suggest that he doesn’t know what he is talking about. All you will do is drive her away or eliminate the value of her counsel. If you give your coach the permission to be honest with you, and choose to work on the things he or she recommends, your life will improve immeasurably.
Take an assessment.
There are a lot of computerized assessments on the market that will tell you clearly and concisely what motivates you, what sort of behaviour you are likely to exhibit in any given situation, how you feel about yourself. They will also tell you how you fit into your environment. These reports are dead-accurate and I recommend them highly. Contact me for more information on where to find the best ones.
Look in the mirror! There might just be a greater person looking back than you ever imagined!
All the Best
Wayne Kehl
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