When It’s About You

Every now and then, someone is going to ask you about yourself, and when they do, what are you going to say? When it’s about you, you need to be prepared with what to say and have it so well ingrained that you know that every time you answer this question, the recipient will be receiving the same answer. This level of consistency shows you are reliable, prepared, and confident.

You are going to need 2 versions of what you say about yourself. The long version is only a 90-second-long life story introduction about you. The other is your 20-30-second elevator pitch which is basically your greatest hits that will primarily feature what you are doing today.

Before you begin, you should do a quick personal inventory of yourself. Get an idea of who you are and what you want to accomplish. You should make a set of three lists and are 1 – Key Life Points, 2 – Gifts & Abilities, and 3 – What You Want. For a more complete list, see: Get to Know Yourself.

1 Key Life Points

Here you are going to make a list of the things that have happened in your past that have shaped who you are. Where are you from? What experiences have helped to give your character depth? What challenges have you faced? How did you handle the challenges you faced?

2 Gifts & Abilities

These are those special skills that you have, that others find fascinating, but you are likely to take for granted because they come so easily to you. These are your strengths, your superpowers. These are innate skills for divine gifts that you are responsible for sharing with others.

3 What You Want

This is the purpose or are the things that you want to bring to the forefront, right now, that you want to be recognized for, or want others to be able to hear your voice about.

      • Do you have something to say?
      • Do you want to be an expert in your field?
      • Do you want to teach something to others?
      • Do you want to help someone? If so, whom?
      • Do you want to share your gifts or abilities? If so, which one(s)?
      • Do you want to communicate something that means a great deal to you?
      • Can your experience(s) benefit others and possibly prevent unnecessary challenges or suffering for others?
      • What do you want to be known for?

This list will provide you with the key points that you want to start making a part of your presentation as you walk through life, every day. Ask yourself,

How Can I Integrate My Message into My Life?

This is where what you want to accomplish is congruent with who you are, your Purpose, Message, Passion, and Mission become a part of your being.

With this information, you are ready to start crafting your 90-second Life Story and your 20-30-second Elevator Pitch (Here are 7 Simple Steps to Create Your Elevator Pitch). Try to include something from every list, even if it’s only one thing. Take your time writing it, memorizing it, and reciting it, so that when someone asks you about yourself, you will be prepared.

When it’s about you, based on the situation, you will know whether it will be appropriate for the 90-second version or the 30-second version. After that, you can converse with a freestyle flow about any gaps that might be of interest to the person that you are talking to or visiting.

 

 

Who Are You Really?

As you traverse your life’s journey, who do you think you are? You start asking questions about your identity, “Who am I?” Who are you? “Am I just an animated biological form helplessly trying to make my way through the rat’s maze of life?” If you are, “What’s the point of my being here at all?” So, you look for meaning in life, and I ask you,

“Who do you think you are?”

I present to you an exercise that might help you find clarity about who you are. You might be surprised that you are far more than you’ve ever given yourself credit for because most people think you are who you are, when nothing could be further from the truth.

When you come to this life, you are given a body and a name. This is who you think you are because that is how the whole world outside of you refers to you, so it’s no surprise that this is who you think you are.

You look in the mirror and you see the reflection of the person you think you are. You can see your body which is recognizable by the name you’ve been given. But this is not who you are.

This is your body which has been given a name that is associated with your body.

You can look at your hand and think that this is your hand, but it is not your hand, it’s your body’s hand. If you cut your hand and see blood dripping from it, you might express something, like “I am bleeding.” Only you are not bleeding. Your body’s hand is bleeding.

If you could take your hand off and put it on the opposite side of the room, and look at it, you can see that you are not your hand. You are still here. You can see your hand over there, yet you are still complete, so you are not the hand.

Continuing this exercise with all the parts of the body will help you to realize that you are not this body which has been labeled with the name which has been assigned to you.

You are something more.

Then you think, “Oh, I am thinking, therefore I am my mind.”

Yet, if you would dare to do it, you could consider continuing the exercise by removing everything that you think you are, all your experiences, thoughts, and beliefs, every thought, and you are still there.

You are something more.

When you’ve completed this phase of the exercise, you realize that you are not the mind. What you are is the conscious source of all life. You can put any label on this which suits your personal paradigm. For me, I refer to this as God because that resonates with me.

If this conscious source of all life were removed from the body with your name associated with it, your lifeless body would collapse to the floor.

Once you understand this, you can see that you are this divine consciousness which is present in all life on this planet, our galaxy, all the galaxies in the universe, and whatever is beyond.

In this manner, you realize that you are one with everything, but you are experiencing this life as a journey witnessed from the vantage point of your identity in your body, so enjoy this life’s journey for what it is.

You might not be able to identify with this exercise and that is perfectly fine. There is no judgment here, and you are perfectly correct in whatever you think about who you are.

What do you want to be known for?

Isn’t it time that you started thinking about how you would like to be known or remembered for? What would you like people to say about you after you’re gone?

Now is the time to start establishing yourself as the person you’d like to be known as.

You’re a wise world walker and as such, you have the ability to see and perceive things unencumbered by the social restrictions that confine other earthlings with limiting beliefs.

The first step in establishing the person that you would like to become is to take stock of where you are currently. Evaluate how you see yourself, how others think about you, and if possible, try to get honest third-party perceptions about the kind of person you are.

Having an objective opinion about one’s self is the first step of wisdom.

I’m a list person, so I would suggest getting a piece of paper and start jotting down what other people’s opinions of you are as well as how you think others might perceive you objectively.

We tend to see ourselves from within and consider the person who we are to be the most intimate and trusted person we know. We know our thoughts, motivations and inner feelings. So, we know how deeply we feel about certain people, circumstances and topics but no one outside ourselves knows how we feel.

Decide which inner feelings you’d like to have recognized for by your family, peers, coworkers, community and possibly the world at large.

So, here’s the next list: Who I Want to be known as?

Go ahead; go crazy. This is your life. The impression you leave on others is all that remains of your life’s journey.

It might help to relax and imagine what you might like to hear people saying about you at your funeral (avoiding the morbidity of the idea). You need not go as far as writing your own eulogy, though some people like doing this as part of the process.

This is not a one-time affair. The wise world walker is constantly evaluating his or her life, being aware of where they are in their journey and intentionally putting their sights on other destinations to engage with.

As a matter of fact, as I write these words, I too, am reflecting deeply… and have just uncovered something that brought me to tears. Though too intimate to share publicly, the basis of it is simply:

I have sincere, deep feelings about something.

The public (exterior) sense of others might have no idea about how passionately I feel about this thing.

If I ask myself, “Would I like to be remembered for how I feel?” or, “Would I like the world to know how I feel?” and the answer is, “Yes.” Then I have a great deal of work to do.

It is not always comfortable work – and in most cases it is not – but thank God you have the wherewithal to realize the separation that exists between

where the perception of you lies

and

what you would like to have known about you.

Your challenge – if you decide to accept it – is to think of ways that your true, authentic self can be seen by others and start taking action.

Who are you?

Let people know who you are.

I want to know you for everything that you would like to be remembered for.

Don’t just tell me; show me.

Sometimes you feel like your life means nothing, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. The exact opposite is true: Your life means everything. You came to this planet with a divine mission, to share your sacred gift.

You’ve felt the tug on your heartstrings. Inside you know you were meant for something more in this life, but you feel unworthy. Any time you even think about having a grander mission, message, or purpose for living, you hear all those negative inner voices telling you all the reasons you are not qualified.

The fact of the matter is that there is no one who is more qualified for you to share your message than you. The most effective method for God to disseminate your message is via someone exactly like you, who have had the experience, witnessed and experienced all the life you have endured.

Perhaps, to you, you think this life has been unfair or cruel and nothing good comes from this life, or any life which has smelled, seen, tasted, heard, or felt the things you know first-hand.

I can tell you this for certain, there are particular people who are in desperate need of receiving your sacred gift, and they would not receive it from anyone else but you. Someone else could use the same words that you might use, but those words would fall on deaf ears because they did not come from your lips, your pen, your keystrokes.

You have felt the same way, haven’t you? Someone tried to tell you something with a kind heart, sensitive and caring, but their words did not resonate with you because you knew they could not possibly know what you were going through. They just had no real frame of reference.

You might find effective methods of distracting yourself from answering the call by spending time online, out with friends, playing video games, shopping, or other ways to make yourself comfortably numb, in an effort to avoid your inner nudge to step out in faith to make an important contribution to your people, the local community, and the world who desperately need your sacred gift.

You must let go of the things that are holding you back, your negative self-talk, insecurities, and anything else that is preventing you from reaching out in faith. You do not need to be 100% confident in your abilities to fully express your sacred gifts, only courageous enough to step into the void, confident enough to know that God and all his angels will be there to support you and catch you if you fall.

It is more important to do a thing in faith than to have everything set up to be perfect. You and your gift are perfections. It may be awkward at first, but you will find it becoming easier and easier as you answer your divine calling, exercising your gifts and honing your skills along the way.

I was never an exceptional singer or songwriter but that didn’t keep me from using this as a method to communicate at a time when I knew of no other way to reach out to my prospective audience waiting to hear my words. For me, this was a stepping stone that would lead me down a different path, finding new ways to connect with others through writing, counseling, public speaking, teaching, and training.

If I’d let my lack of self-confidence keep me down, I would have never been able to help those I’ve assisted in achieving their highest and best, in only ways that I could have. This is my divine calling.

We do not have to be perfect, only brave enough to trust that something bigger and wiser than we could ever be is at work behind the scenes, and has selected you, and only uniquely you, to accomplish this task.

What if you never answer the call? No problem. You have free will to do, or not to do, things and to live your life in any way you decide. God will use someone else to do the best they can to pick up the slack, but you were God’s first choice.

One of my dearest friends, whom I loved dearly, committed suicide, leaving a note with only these words,

“My life means nothing.”

This was after spending years of fulfilling purpose in the assistance of others with the empowered sharing of sacred gifts, then something happened. I don’t really know the details of what darkness befell my dearest friend, but clearly, it had been too much to bear for another moment, when the following day would have been an altogether new day.

Many people do not cut their life short in such a dramatic way but do spend a great deal of time and effort, sometimes spanning the whole of their lives avoiding their sacred calling.

Will you answer the call today?

Reach out to me, and I and my people will help you get from where you are to where you will be able to honor your sacred fit, and in a sense, sing your song, as only you can sing it.

Your calling is calling you.

Call me.

 

You Are the Result of What Works for You

Life is a series of learnings from trial and error. You are the result of what works for you. It starts from birth. If, as a baby, you cried and got what you wanted, you learned that’s what works for you. If you cried and that did not work for you, maybe you discovered that being unusually quiet worked better for you.

On and on it goes, as you discover how to get what you want. Left to itself, this trial and error system of discovery molds you into the person that you are as you enter adulthood. Without some sort of intervention or personal exploration, you will be forever hardwired as this version of yourself.

So it is with each and every one of us, we are all a product of the lives we live. It is not unreasonable for you to expect others to respect this about you. It’s not much of a stretch from the idea that who you are is the result of a lifetime of learning how to get what you want, to respecting others as being the result of how they have learned what works for them.

If you can keep this in mind as you encounter individuals with their different personality traits, you can become more tolerant of everyone’s right to approach situations, circumstances, and relationships with others in way that can be highly varied to the way you might respond or operate.

This is the primary aspect of tolerance, accepting people for who they are, honoring each individual’s journey they have traveled, allowing them to be who they are, without judgment or expectation that they be like you. For no one can be like you. Let’s face it, you’re one of a kind. Beyond that, not only is each of us unique one from the other, we are also extremely connected, and ultimately one, individual yet all comprising the sum of all the parts.

Not unlike the human body.

Our bodies are all comprised of billions of individual components. The body is a whole, yet is the sum of many individual cells all working for the common good, to serve the body. Each cell is individual and replicates itself throughout the system.

Every once and a while, a cell gets out of control and exerts its right to dominate the other cells in the body and will thrive at the expense of all the other cells, throwing the cellular synchronization of the body out of balance as it fights for dominance. This is cancer.

Just as in the body, our society is full of individuals who seek to dominate others at any expense, without regard for others’ right to life. This is social cancer.

Unbeknownst to us, your trial and error life’s learning process may have turned you into a cancerous cell in society. If you, or someone you know, has been hardwired to be societal cancer, there is still hope.

All cancers need not be all-consuming or fatal forever.

Eradicating social cancer is an option, but we cannot just kill off all the cancerous individuals in our world. We can, however, love and support them, which could be hugely beneficial (chances are, they have little capacity for love because it was not a part of their lifetime of learning).

Love is the most powerful healing energy in the world and there is no doubt it has the ability to reverse the effects of any cancer, even to transform a malignant cancerous cell into a healthy cell, or at the very least, a benign cancer cell. But, the societal cancer cell must be willing to participate because each of us has free will, which once initiated can block any positive potential to change.

There are other societal mechanisms in place which may intervene in the hopes of reprogramming social cancers of particular types. While they are temporarily effective at relieving the negative pressure imposed by someone who is out of control, there is a very high rate of recidivism which means that following intervention, it is very likely that they will return to their cancerous lifestyle.

Though there are many kinds of interventions. In my experience, a hugely impactful religious experience can have a significant transformative effect on an otherwise cancerous individual turning them into a healthy reproductive cell benefiting the community and the whole of humanity.

This love-powered spiritual transformation has the lowest degree of recidivism known to man, statistically at present. Regardless of how you feel about structured religion, it’s effects on the metamorphosis of otherwise negatively-charged human beings is undeniable.

You may, as an individual expansion explorer, be able to have an equally impactful influence on such an individual but you must have their permission and blessing to do so, or else they would not be receptive to any efforts you may exert on their behalf in the long term.

Another transformative scenario includes the awakening of an individual who could be (or potentially be) a cancerous individual. On their own accord, without the influence of others, this person seeks out their own transformation, growth, and expansion, based on their own personal exploration.

The statistics are not in, yet, on this new area of awakening, self-growth, and expansion, but the anecdotal evidence is impressive, and it is an active process of human evolution.

So, if you’re feeling like you are the result of what works for you, you are. But your story does not end there. In fact, this is where the most exciting part of your evolutionary story begins.

Who Are You Known As?

You owe yourself the honor of seeing that you are represented in the world in a way that is in accordance with how you would like to be known and/or remembered. So, who are you known as?

You know who you are. You know how you think, what’s important to you, what makes your heart sing, etc.… but are you presenting yourself in such a way, so others can see you for who you are?

More often than not, we are oblivious to how others perceive the public image we project of ourselves.

Nowadays, we have these huge social media billboards posted all over the Internet. You may think of yourself as being a certain kind of person, but what do you look like on the World Wide Web?

In a worst-case scenario, since nearly no one knows it will come, how would you be seen by those who looked you up online after hearing that you had died in an accident today? Chances are, no one has your password, so your social media life would be frozen in time at the sound of your flatline.

Beeeeeeeeep.

Looking at some random people’s social media, you could safely assume that this person would be known as someone who hates the President. This person believes in aliens. Here’s an avid conspiracy theorist. This person falls in love with a different person every month and vacillates between hating and loving prospective lovers.

Here’s a sarcastic critic of just about everyone and everything. Here’s somebody who relentlessly posts shameless selfies. This guy never wears a shirt and has pineapple-hair. This person is clearly always in a drunken stupor, and here’s the world’s biggest fan of marijuana.

I had a friend who was clearly identified as a thrill seeker, so it was no surprise when he was involved in a fatal accident. In his case, his social media was an accurate representation of his tendency to tempt fate. But there was so much more to him that those of us who knew him well saw in him which was not represented on the Internet.

If your ability to post on social media was curtailed by your ability to live, how would you be remembered? It might be worth taking a look at. Maybe it’s time to post something congruent with how you might like to be remembered?

And that’s just your virtual personality. What about in real life?

In real life, at school, work, hanging with friends, we often represent ourselves in one way, when the identity of our authentic self is quite different. We might hide our sensitive side, or present ourselves as bolder, to either prevent ourselves from being vulnerable or to advance our position among peers or coworkers.

You are far more than people might think who you are or what you do.

Chances are, even your family members may not know your best attributes. What you believe,

Maybe it’s time to take a look at how you are perceived in the community. Ask friends and coworkers whom you can trust how they see you. Do they see you the way you want to be seen?

Who are you? Today might be a good take to take a look at your personal brand.

Who Are You? What Do You Do?

Everything revolves around your answers to the two questions every person you meet asks you, “Who are you? What do you do?”

When you’ve decided to take a stand or make your mark, you will be miles ahead doing the preliminary work of creating a platform to support yourself along the way, so prepare for exponential success.

Who Are You?

To start off, you must define who you are. Of course, you know who you are, but how are people who don’t know you going to know who you are and what you do? Lets stat with who you are.

Try to encapsulate in a few paragraphs your life as it has led until now. No need to go into great detail, but be certain to include key elements which helped develop you into the person you are today. Don’t worry if you think your life has been lackluster or unglamorous. If you think your life was awful, look at these famous celebrities who suffered prior to achieving their highest and best.

Be brief, but transparent. Enquiring people want to know you have a history, and who knows? Your story may be incredibly inspiring for someone else.

What Do You Do?

This is the second question anyone asks you, so be ready with a one-sentence answer about what you do which sets you apart from anyone else. But before you answer this question, you will be miles ahead, if you know your purpose, message, passion, and mission (PMPM). I know many people who were forever known as one thing because they were not congruent with their PMPM at the time they were visited by media exposure and lived to regret it.

Armed with a clear sense of who you are and what your PMPM is, you can go about the work of creating your congruent unique identity, which we refer to as your brand.

Let’s take a brief look at what this might look like. Let’s say, for instance, you are a man who was raised in an urban neighborhood where cats over-populated the area. But you admired the cats, not far from being homeless yourself, as a young child, you could imagine what it might be like to be a disadvantaged cat. You could relate to them, you had compassion for them.

Then, one day, you visited your grandmother in a nursing home, to you, she seemed to be in a crowded facility, yet alone, not unlike a cat. So, one day you brought a cat from the neighborhood, “Scruffy,” one that you had nurtured to health, and gifted it to your grandmother.

It changed your grandmother’s life and the two of them, the grandmother and Scruffy lived out their lives together in joyous harmony. This was when you realized what your mission in life was to be.

Who Are You?

I’m JAG, just a guy who was raised in a neighborhood overrun by cats, but I loved them and became known as the Man Who Saves Cats.

What Do You Do?

I’m a Feline Rescue Engineer and as the Man Who Saves Cats, I match disadvantaged cats with people whose lives can be enhanced by the love and affection a cat can give.

Add to these a simple 30-second elevator speech, which you have practiced and can quickly recite verbatim and you are almost there because you’ll want to make sure you…

Buy the Dot-Com

In my Branding Masters seminars, a key component of capitalizing on those brief moments in time when the planets align, and you have a few seconds to capitalize on your media exposure, the dot-com makes all the difference. So, having the dot com which represents who you are and what you do (if at all possible. If not, keep reinventing, until you can find an available and catchy dot-com) is so important.

Properly prepared and positioned you can fulfill your life’s mission with expanded efficacy by laying the proper groundwork. Then, if you ever find yourself in front of a microphone, for even the briefest of moments, you can take advantage of that moment in time to expand the reach of your mission, even more.

Even if you are a witness to an unrelated freak accident or disaster, the interviewer will ask those two questions. If your answer includes “Man Who Saves Cats” and “Feline Rescue Engineer” and you own those dot-coms, and have information on those websites delineating who you are, what your mission is, and how people can join you in your mission, you’ve grasped the ultimate brass ring.

If this happens to you, and you are prepared, people will mob rush

manwhosavescats.com
and
felinerescueengineer.com

You will see your web servers explode with web traffic, your email servers will smoke, and your phone will ring off-the-hook if you’ve taken these preliminary steps. This man could easily then launch the Ultimate Pet Rescue.

You can also take the necessary steps to increase your credibility as a source and expert in your field. See: Where is Your Credibility?

If you are prepared in this way, when good fortune is visited upon you, others will see it as an instant overnight success, as if lightning had struck, never knowing that you had carefully laid the groundwork to ensure your success in the event of such a lightning strike.

Elsewise, you will have been just another nameless face on the TV, forever remembering that moment, when had you been prepared, could have made all the difference in the world. These moments are very difficult, if not impossible, to recreate.

When lightning strikes will you be ready?