A few weeks ago, I pondered in this blog the notion of what people call you. Are you that which they state or something different? Are your behavior and actions consistent with what they say or are they dissonant? It matters. Be careful what you say about yourself; people might believe you, for better or for worse.

I encountered someone who took great pride in calling herself “a firecracker.” After watching behaviors and actions for a while, I realized she was right. A firecracker is a generally useless item whose sole purpose is to make noise and draw attention to itself. The title fit, unfortunately. The sad part is that she, like all people, is not/was not useless, but her declaration of self used a bad example, albeit accurate for the roles she was playing. The way I evaluated her actions was largely defined by how she described herself…and that’s the point.  People often see us based on how we describe ourselves.

In the previously cited blog, I quoted Emerson who said, “Your actions speak so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying.”  Perhaps a useful corollary is, “Others will evaluate us against what we say we are.”  This a good time to recall we are all terribly imperfect; humility, as an offset to our natural tendency to pride, is a good thing (and I say that as a guy whose former boss’ administrative assistant called me, with all due affection, a “pompous ass.”).  Whatever descriptions we use for ourselves can, and will, be used by others to consider what it is that they actually see in us.  Be authentic; be genuine; be human – that is as good as it gets.