It is something that as you mature you ask yourself more frequently. It is so important to understand who you are, especially when it comes to your career. The bit that everyone struggles with is knowing who you are. I have been asked before what my personal brand was. I gave this a lot of thought and still struggled to come up with an answer.
However, I read the book 'A Path Through The Jungle' (below), by Steve Peters, and there was an interesting concept that talks about the person you want to be and it being your true identity.
The concept is simple and it makes so much sense. Think about the person you want to be and write down what that looks like. It could contain words like patient, kind, present, etc. This is who you are. You would think that everyone would come up with the same list and same characteristics but according to Steve Peters, this is not the case.
Now you may have times where you act out of character or you do or say something that is the opposite to the list you created. This does not mean that you aren't the person that you wrote down, it just means your 'chimp' part of your brain took over and hijacked your action.
If you don't know what I mean by your 'chimp' part of your brain then you need to read this book. It is such an interesting concept and makes so much sense.
So when you act out of character, the book teaches you techniques to help manage this and then helps you learn from it to help you be the person you truly are.
One technique I use is that I have a moment of reflection every morning that I schedule in my diary so it reminds me to do it. I call it 'chimp reflection' and I give myself 15 minutes to then think about the day before and if at any moment my chimp took over. I would then write the instance down and then come up with what I will do differently next time to align with the person I want to be.
What I like about this concept is that you take ownership of being the person you want to be. You own what is on your list and then you own the way you show others the real you.
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Thanks for reading,
Gav
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