When meeting people for the first time, people who know nothing about you, how do you introduce yourself and what you do? How do you describe yourself? Remember, these people don’t know you and so they perceive you by the way you act and how you describe yourself. How do you want to be seen and perceived by others?

I realise that I’m starting here with lots of questions and I’ve done that on purpose to get you thinking about yourself. If you’re not sure how you perceive yourself, how can you expect anyone else to perceive you in the way you would prefer?

Everyone has their own set of filters, beliefs, and ways of looking at life and what forms part of that is those with whom we interact and how they behave. Think about this – when you see a police offer, you know that it is a police officer by the uniform and also, potentially, by the behaviour: confident, assertive speaking voice, how the person stands and moves, and so on. When somebody tells us who they are and what they do, we immediately attach to that our set of values, beliefs, and perceptions about what kind of person they are. We (usually) have a clear set of expectations about the person based on what they are portraying. We do not doubt them out of hand and, almost always, we subconsciously look for things to support the perception we now have of them.

I once did some work with a woman who’d just lost her job in investment banking. However, her real passion was art and photography. We were talking about what she wanted to do for a living and I described her as an Artist. The shock on her face was, actually, quite amusing! She replied “but I’m not an artist! Artists have been doing it for years, and they’re great at what they do! I just make pots and take a few photographs!”. Firstly – notice all the limiting beliefs in her reply. She was making the distinction that because she hadn’t been doing it for years that she was not an artist. Secondly, she made the assumption that what she did was “not great” – we are all very critical of our work/creations when we first start – the pieces of pottery and photos she showed me I thought were brilliant. Even Picasso had to start somewhere, and was not a Master Artist at first – but he was still an artist!

The real crux of this issue here is that if you don’t see yourself as the thing you want to be, neither will the people and the world around you. When you start to see yourself, talk about yourself, and behave ways that support what you want to be, then the Universe conspires with you to make it happen. The first few times you tell people who you are and what you do may be a little uncomfortable but eventually, like all things, it becomes easier and easier to get into the flow of it.

The more you describe yourself in the way in which you would like to be perceived, the more you will find that people accept you as such – even those people who’ve known you for a long time. Remember to, it is not helpful to allow other people’s perceptions of who we were to hold us back from being who we want to be. We are not who we were yesterday. Indeed, you are not who you were before you started reading this “thought”. You are more because you cannot be less, and you cannot stay the same. It’s impossible.

Your job, and your only job in this, is to be clear about who you are. So I ask you again – who are you, and who are you becoming?