Elevator Pitch for Ourselves

Today we’re going to be talking about who you are? who are you? And how do you describe yourself? How do you see yourself. It’s important we begin to fashion how we see ourselves because how we see ourselves and behave, ends up becoming how we’re perceived by others. Now, it’s important to recognize we can’t control how we’re perceived. But we can definitely control how we present ourselves. Throughout my entrepreneurial career, I ran into situations where I’d be on the phone with clients, or I’d be in passing and meeting other people. And they would say, Hey, this is Rahim. My fill in the blank, my graphic designer. He’s my web designer. Oh, he’s my creative guy. Oh, this is Rahim, the philosopher, right? So everybody else was trying to define me to other people.

When was I going to take the initiative and define myself? Today, what we’re going to focus on, we’re going to focus on a couple techniques where we could sit down and begin to script our own definition of ourselves. No longer are you going to be that person in that new meeting, when somebody says, describe yourself, you say, I am an accountant, I am a hairdresser. I am anything because those are affirmations and those affirmations tied to your identity. You are not your work. The work is what you do. So who are you? I’ll admit, I didn’t have this answer. Even for myself at the time, I had a cheesy boilerplate definition of what I did and how that could help people’s businesses. But at the end of the day, I hadn’t really invested time in articulating a concise, personal statement of who I am, and how do I provide value to the world?

Now, you may be asking yourself, why is this valuable? What What? What am I going to get from this? Why should I take the time out of my busy schedule to do this, this little exercise. Number one, because we need to be focused. And it will allow you to be more focused, because as you refine and distill who you are, and you articulate that, internally, you will begin to see all the areas of your life that are out of accord with it. Knowing who you are, is also understanding of knowing who you’re not. You’re going to begin to leave behind with practice those aspects that don’t represent who you are anymore. Number two, the second aspect of why we should do this because we make a more concerted attempt in presenting ourselves in ways that follow along the lines of how we see ourselves.

As I said earlier, you can’t control the way you’re perceived. But you definitely have control over how you are presented. A line and one of my favorite songs recently went, [a line about judging ourselves by our intentions and everyone else by their actions]. So now we have to live in accord with the way that we present ourselves to the world. The more we do a certain behavior, you begin to be labeled by that behavior. But when you get out ahead of it, and you start structuring the conversation, structuring the language, structuring the the image that goes out into the world about you the image that you begin to share with others when they ask about who you are and that begins to flood the conversation. In business, everybody says, how will we know we’re growing if we don’t chart our progress.

So starting here, let’s begin to author and articulate our vision of who we are. Let’s use our imagination to construct where we want to become. And close that gap of behavior. Close that gap, of how we see ourselves close that gap of expectation, until we become it. So go grab a notebook, if you drive, and let’s wait till you get home or you get stationary. And listen to this again, and go through this process. The first thing you need to do is write everything that you’re passionate about creating. And you’re passionate about becoming and pursuing, and write it on the list. My List consisted of philosophy, teaching, travel, exploration, photography, graphic design and branding, motion graphics. As I began to examine them, it was interesting because communication stood out sharing, teaching, curiosity, creativity, and exploration, they were all pretty central in how each of those aspects felt.

And I wanted to go deeper, and see if there was a central word that could articulate who I was, in all of these different things. I tell stories, by receiving information by studying philosophy, studying art, studying the world by exploring and with that rich curiosity. And I share these things through communication design, I share these things through teaching. And so storyteller was at the essence of how I choose to describe myself to the world, take some time with this, I’d be really interested to see what you come up with. What I want you to begin to notice is thst people are still going to make demands of you. How much are you going to push back? How much are you still going to do that doesn’t represent who you say you are. yesterday’s episode was about integrity.

Now, as we have begun to define and refine our image of ourself, that too has an integrity and people are going to challenge that integrity, not because they’re doing it against you. Are you staying in your lane. If somebody’s asking something that you let go off, are you going to bring it up just to serve them because you don’t win. And so understanding who you are, and how you want to move forward, you begin to establish a launch pad that’s going to spring you into more of who you really are.