I know what you’re thinking.
Your parents probably told you to be yourself.
And I’m here telling you that you shouldn’t listen to them.
Call me crazy, but I believe not being yourself could be the greatest thing that you could ever do. Crazy, I know.
The problem with being yourself is that we’re all a mixed bag of both good and bad traits. We’ve learned to treat people a certain way, act a certain way, and live accordingly to those we’ve surrounded ourselves with.
By the end of this article, I believe you’ll be convinced that you shouldn’t always be yourself.
I’ll have you know that this whole realization didn’t just come out of the blue for me.
It began last month when I started asking myself who has an exceptional reputation. Luckily, this was rather easy for me as I’ve been surrounded by many great role models. Of which, I’ll pick on Carol Leaman, CEO of Axonify, and Ginny Dybenko, Executive Director of the University of Waterloo Stratford campus. What’s amazing about these women is that if you bring up their names in a conversation, and someone happens to know them their eyes light up immediately, and they have nothing but good words to say about them. Both Carol and Ginny have mastered the art of the personal brand if you ask me.
Now, when I asked Ginny how she went about building her brand, her response was quite straightforward. All she recommended was being yourself.
Although arguably the simplest piece of advice, I believe, there’s a problem with this way of thinking, because it implies that you know who you are.
And what if you’re not content with who you are? Or you’re still trying to figure out who you are?
Although I know Ginny is totally right in her answer and being authentic is paramount, I’d argue being yourself is only half of the solution to developing to your full potential. To accomplish this you need to create your own personal brand as a measure stick to see where you came from and plan out where you’re going.
We’re a product of our environment
Now, I’m a firm believer in that the environment around us is one of the biggest influences in our lives that shapes us into who we are. Before you can even dive into creating a new brand, you need to identify what influenced your life in a major way so that you can understand some of the reasons behind why you are you today.
To show you what this process looks like and save time, I’ll narrow down the biggest influences in my life. I decided to limit mine to 5 major areas.
Mom:
One of the largest influencers in my life has been my Mom. Although she probably won’t ever admit it, she’s one of the biggest personal growth gurus out there. She constantly challenges herself to be a better version of herself, and it’s contagious if you’re around her long enough.
Dad:
My Dad loves business and finding deals. I honestly think it’s one of the reasons why he switched into real estate. He probably gets more excited about finding the deal than the client. So from a business standpoint, I learned a lot from my Dad, but his work ethic is really what I admire. For him, a good job is its own reward. This mantra stuck with me and is one of the reasons why I make work such a huge part of my life — I guess it feels good to do a good job. :)
Grandpa:
Another huge influence on my life is my Grandpa. He’s quiet like me, but when he speaks he either puts a smile on your face, teaches you something new or tells you about his time in WW2. What I admire most about him is his simple outlook on life and focus on “leaving everything better than the way you found it.” It’s so straightforward but struck home for me. When I die, I want to leave this world a better place like him.
School:
As a kid, I was forced to go to a small, private Christian school. I hated it when I was a kid and teenager, but looking back a decade later I’m able to see that I (praise god) retained some of the values I learned about and am constantly trying to be a better person.
TEDxUW:
TEDxUW showed me that when you do meaningful work you can’t even classify it as work 95% of the time. There’s something incredibly satisfying about building people up so that they can spread ideas worth sharing. It’s not only inspiring to hear their story but was eye-opening to see how much people cared about the TEDx brand and what it stood for. Ever since working with TEDxUW, I’ve been on the hunt to find meaningful work that I can excel at. And when I build my business, you bet it’s going to be doing something meaningful.
Actions speak louder than words
When developing your personal brand, it’s easy to dream up this amazing idea of who you want to become and write it down as part of your brand, but the hardest and most important part is creating a brand that you’ll actually be able to implement (through actions) and be proud of.
What bothers me the most is seeing a company’s about page that outlines some BS list of values that you know for a fact they don’t abide by. One of my favorite examples of this is Aeroplan, after 2.5 hours of waiting on hold with my TD Branch Manager and being passed off to 4 different departments I decided to do some digging. What I found is that one of their top corporate priorities is customer service. Clearly it’s just some idealistic value that was never followed through on.
The best companies, I feel, don’t need a list of values on their website because you experience them through all touch points you have with the business.
That’s why I’ve created a list of some of the values I want to embody and high-level action plans to carry them out.
Since it’s a lot to remember all at once, I’ll be focusing on one value for each month and finding ways to refine my actions on a daily basis. My hope is that through consciously trying to embody these values, I’ll be able to carry them out eventually without having to think about it.
Here’s the format:
What you value
What to do about it
Someone whose word means something
- Show up on time
- Follow your promises through
Excellence
- Don’t half ass sh##
- Get really good at whatever you put your hands to
- Don’t spread yourself too thin
- Set lots of time aside for learning and personal development
Humble
- Never brag
- Treat everyone as an opportunity to learn from
Experimentation
- Try 1 new thing each week, whether it be cooking, doing a new workout, etc
- Take on new projects whenever possible
- Try a 30 day challenge each month
Happiness
- Put effort into making people’s days a little better
- Treat the art of being happy as a muscle that needs to be worked out every single day
- Smile :)
Family
- Treat your network and friends like family
- Try your best to always be there for friends
Empowered
- Give people a reputation to live up to
- Help people identify what they’re great at and encourage them to pursue it further
- Create the life you want to live
Opinionated
- Form strong opinions on topics
- Always be understanding of other’s views and how it relates to yours
Goal Oriented
- Set actionable goals to GSD (get sh## done)
- Prioritize what needs to be done and what you want to be done
- Add a couple fun activities in your every day
Respect
- Treat everyone like you’d want to be treated
- Never gossip
- Put effort into memorizing people’s names
Helpful
- Intentionally go out of your way to help at least 3 people each week
- Look for ways to help without people having to ask you
If you think I missed any important values or have tips to better live ’em out, please add them here and I’ll update this post with them. :)
Find savage friends
In case you’re wondering what savage friends are, to me, they are close friends that always have your back and care enough about you to tell you off.
I asked a few of my savage friends (you know who you are) what they thought of me and what my most defining characteristics were. The purpose of this was to make sure that I could get a holistic view of what my current brand consisted of.
It’s worth noting that this entire process is pointless if you don’t have savage friends to give you honest feedback.
The questions I asked if you want to copy them are:
- What is one of your favorite traits about me?
- What’s one trait I could work on?
- What do you think the #1 thing is I care about?
When reviewing some of the responses from my friends, I found out that I had this huge weakness… I suck at opening up to people. Some of my friends had tried so hard to get me to open up, and I was oblivious to their efforts. And when I started to interact with people after I found this is out, I was shocked by how common this was in my life. And it scared me! I would have countless shallow conversations with my friends and coworkers. I could easily make people laugh, but the problem was that I never let people see the other side of me or invest time in building these meaningful relationships. Having acted this way for countless years, I, obviously, wanted to change that right away. But, it’s not as easy as I thought because the fundamental way I interact with people hasn’t really changed since I was a kid.
One of the ways I tried to address this was by diving into the root of the problem. Luckily, it wasn’t too difficult because I could vividly remember a huge turning point in my life when I was a young kid and fell in love. Not just the kind of love you feel when you like someone, but the kind when you can’t imagine what you’d do without the other person. I know it sounds cheesy, but still to this day I haven’t felt anything stronger than this feeling. What I had as a kid felt like a dream and I had the rest of my life planned out with my best friend. I even pictured us as the Spy Kids parents when we grew up. I’d wear black and she’d wear red. And then one day she had another friend come over, and we did a bunch of competitions, and he beat me at all of them. I guess I felt jealous and humiliated. So I did probably the dumbest thing and completely shut her out of my life. I felt that I wasn’t good enough, and she deserved someone better. I crushed my heart oddly enough.
More recently, I had a friend who I really liked during my last term at university and found it near impossible to open up. It felt so weird to talk even about simple personal stuff because over the years I put up these imaginary walls that protected me from getting hurt again. I didn’t even tell her that I liked her until she left the country partly because I realized at that point I didn’t have much to lose.
But, what I didn’t know until now is that “this whole not opening up thing” distanced me from not only her but also my friends and family. For the longest time, I just assumed it was a part of who I am, and it still will always be a part of who I am to a certain extent, but I’m making a change.
This is also one of the reasons why I decided to post this article online. My hope is that by being completely transparent about my personal rebrand someone else out there will give it a shot.
Give yourself a reputation to live up to
Now, this part of defining your personal brand is a little dark, and I totally didn’t intend to have it as a section, but just last week I was walking to Kitchener, ON and found a shortcut through a graveyard. And I was surprised by how many people had these huge tombstones. At first, I was thinking of how much money was wasted on these dumb pieces of rock, but then it struck me that this was just an object that people would go to remember their loved ones. It wasn’t so much the object that bothered me, but the fact that when we die, what do we want to be known for?
Is it the friends around us? Is it our accomplishments? Or is it the impact we’ve had in the world?
To be honest, I still don’t completely know the answer to these questions, but through asking myself about death, I’ve been able to remind myself that time is finite and prioritizing how you spend your time is invaluable.
And when I think of how I spend my time. I always want to push the limit and fill every minute with something productive. But, what I found out is that it’s too easy just to go through life on autopilot and forget that we’re alive to live a life with purpose.
My hope for this section is that you can use death as a motivator to define what it is you want to be known for and hopefully spend your time accordingly.
Final thoughts
Although you should always strive to be yourself, there’s a flaw in this way of thinking. To build an exceptional reputation, you need to be constantly redefining who you are.
To be successful, you need to emulate character traits from the people you respect and define what you want to be known for.
At the end of the day, we’re all a mixed bag of both good and bad traits. It’s up to us to change the balance.
Thank you for reading, friend! If you enjoyed it, hit that squishy, green, heart button below. Would mean a lot to me and it helps other people see the story.
