Your Personal Identity (Know Yourself)
I think the way in which we refer to ourselves reveals a tremendous amount about our self-image, and whether we see ourselves as Victims or as Navigators.
Navigators normally refer to themselves in professional and highly positive terms, no matter what their current employment status may be.
To illustrate this: Think about someone you have known who lost a job and spent some time before gaining new employment.
How did he or she refer to themselves in social situations? This may seem like a subtle point but can make a dramatic difference in our life experience.
Did they refer to themselves as being “unemployed”? Or did they say, "I am a Banker or Lawyer"?
Note the difference. It is enormous. The first response is certainly accurate, but the person is identifying themselves in …show more content…
That's it. It was just that simple.
I told him to get a job by five o'clock the next day. He protested, of course, thinking that I was joking. I told him that he could do it if he made up his mind and set a clear deadline for himself. I pointed out that this job could be something for the interim. It didn't have to be the job that would last him a lifetime (Does anyone have such a thing anymore anyway?) but that he must decide to have a job by the next afternoon. I didn't even tell him how to accomplish this. I knew that he was fully capable of figuring it out.
The gentleman called me the next evening to report that he had accepted a night audit job in a small hotel. I congratulated him. All work is honorable!
The gentleman in this story had been an architect previously. In this new position, he would be working "behind the scenes" where he didn’t have to worry about being recognized, if that was a concern. And, he would work evening hours, so he still had the bulk of the day to search for an architect's position. But he would do so from a greater position of strength, at least in his own sense of
I think the way in which we refer to ourselves reveals a tremendous amount about our self-image, and whether we see ourselves as Victims or as Navigators.
Navigators normally refer to themselves in professional and highly positive terms, no matter what their current employment status may be.
To illustrate this: Think about someone you have known who lost a job and spent some time before gaining new employment.
How did he or she refer to themselves in social situations? This may seem like a subtle point but can make a dramatic difference in our life experience.
Did they refer to themselves as being “unemployed”? Or did they say, "I am a Banker or Lawyer"?
Note the difference. It is enormous. The first response is certainly accurate, but the person is identifying themselves in …show more content…
That's it. It was just that simple.
I told him to get a job by five o'clock the next day. He protested, of course, thinking that I was joking. I told him that he could do it if he made up his mind and set a clear deadline for himself. I pointed out that this job could be something for the interim. It didn't have to be the job that would last him a lifetime (Does anyone have such a thing anymore anyway?) but that he must decide to have a job by the next afternoon. I didn't even tell him how to accomplish this. I knew that he was fully capable of figuring it out.
The gentleman called me the next evening to report that he had accepted a night audit job in a small hotel. I congratulated him. All work is honorable!
The gentleman in this story had been an architect previously. In this new position, he would be working "behind the scenes" where he didn’t have to worry about being recognized, if that was a concern. And, he would work evening hours, so he still had the bulk of the day to search for an architect's position. But he would do so from a greater position of strength, at least in his own sense of