This week, a leader I am coaching said (in jest, I’m sure), “I just want to be you when I grow up.” After a wry chuckle, I told her that was a recipe for frustration. She should strive to be her best self.
The Colonel so often said to me, “Just be yourself, kid. Everyone else is taken.” Each time we were re-stationed, there was a new city, a new neighborhood, a new school that I was suddenly thrust into. I had to find new friends, new groups, and new activities. It wasn’t easy, but it taught me to get more comfortable in my own skin and become a more reliable friend to myself. Each new school posed challenges, and it was always tempting to try to fit in with the “cool kids.” And isn’t that the same with each new job and each new department or team we find ourselves in? Dad would see that struggle in me – every time. His advice never changed. “Don’t try to be the someone you think everyone else expects you to be. When you know who you are, the friends you are supposed to find will naturally gravitate to you.”
This advice has served me well through my life. Although there have been times when I’ve forgotten it for a while and struggled with my identity. When I stepped away from the public seminar company and first began speaking under my own name and my own platform, I didn’t really know what that platform was – or who I was as a speaker. Did I need to be Lisa Nichols, or Suze Orman, Jeanne Robertson, or Joyce Meyers? Well, the answer, of course, is none of the above. I needed to be me and develop my own unique voice as I grew in my business and career. Each time I feel a bit “off” or out of my element in a situation, I try to remember Dad’s wise words.
You can’t be significant if you are trying to be someone else. That someone else was destined to be significant in their own way. Trying to be them waters down their significance and delays or defeats who you are destined to be and your own significance.
As Dad would say, “Kiddo, just do you. You’re perfect the way you are.”
Read Lauren’s Whitepaper on The Nine Essentials of Significant Leadership.