Tag: confidence

Better an Awesome You than a Mediocre Knockoff

Michael WhitehouseLeave a comment
Profile photo of RJ Redden

I often see discussions on business forums on personal appearance and professional appearance. People will talk about having to dye their hair back to normal colors or hide the more colorful parts of their personality from their social media.

The solution is not to remove your unique elements. Rather it is to clearly lean in to them 100%. Be the most awesome and badass version of yourself.

Above is the LinkedIn profile picture for RJ Redden. She is a marketing consultant that I met at the Strategic Alliance Live conference last week. She was there, googles, cape, purple hair and all and not a single one of the hundreds of highly successful entrepreneurs in attendance blinked an eyelash at her attire.

In fact, the reason I know her is that our conversation started with me saying: “I don’t know you, but your goggles tell me I want to.” I was right. She’s awesome.

The place you get in trouble is when you are apologetically yourself. When you sneak into the room with purple hair and wonder how people will react. She didn’t wonder. She knew. Her demeanor said “If you have a problem with my googles, that’s your problem, not mine.”

It’s 2021 and all the rules are in flux. No one knows what the cultural norms are, so why not make your own.

By the way, she has this super cool personality assessment tool. You should go there and check it out.

You might enjoy my impactful daily Morning Motivation podcast. Less than 5 minutes a day to get you fired up and ready for greatness. Listen and subscribe at http://morningmotivation.fun.

Swagger

Michael WhitehouseLeave a comment
swagger

What is swagger? It is a sense of comfort in the world. It’s taking the sense of familiarity you have on your home turf and taking it everywhere because the entire world is your home turf.

Have you ever been at a party and met someone you assumed was the host because they were so comfortable? That’s swagger.

Have you known someone who would cut through back hallways and “staff only” doors to get where they needed to go and no one ever questioned them? That’s swagger.

It’s not arrogance. If you’ve got swagger, you don’t need arrogance. Arrogance is what it looks like when someone pretends to have it but is secretly worried that they’ll be found out.

You’ve heard the expression “what could you do if you knew you could not fail?”

How about this one: “What could you do if you did not care if you failed?”

If you’ve got swagger, you don’t care if you fail because you know you can never really fail. You can try and succeed, or you can try and learn something.

Everyone feels imposter syndrome. Everyone looks at others who are better than them and wonders if they fit in among those great people.

Swagger is deciding that you do. It is acknowledging that you’re not the best and you don’t have to be because you’ve got something to offer and people are luck to have it.

You don’t need permission to have swagger. You don’t need success to have swagger. You just decide to have it.

It is as simple as that. It is as complicated as that.

It is as easy as that. It is as hard as that.

When you can master yourself to the degree that you can decide to have swagger, then you are entitled to it.

Would you like to find your swagger? That’s part of what a coach does. I help people get in touch with makes them powerful and develop that self mastery to get that swagger. To learn more, set up a complementary coaching session at http://michaelwhitehouse.coach.

How Do You See Yourself?

Michael WhitehouseLeave a comment
How Do You See Yourself?

How do you see yourself? What is your self perception?

The other day, I had someone approach me looking for assertiveness training. They felt that they did not stand up for themselves enough, and that people were able to walk all over them.

As it turned out, the lack of assertiveness was not the problem. It was the symptom of the problem.

The problem was that this person saw themselves as a person whose voice did not deserve to be heard. They did not see themselves as a person who had value to give to the world.

They did not believe they were worth the space they took up in the world.

I told them that assertiveness training would not be effective because it would be an act. It would not be authentic. They could not stand up for themselves because they did not believe they should.

All the training in the world would not help because it would feel like a lie, and the same subconsious block would prevent them from acting on the training as was already preventing them from saying what they should.

Rather than paper over the problem with technique, this person needs to delve deep into the causes of their insecurity. They need to sit with themselves to understand the purpose that they were placed on Earth for.

Every one of us is given a particular set of gifts: skills, talents, desires, ambitions, perceptions. These gifts give us the power and potential to be great, to affect the world in great ways, to make a difference.

Since we are given these gifts, we have the obligation to use them and to live in our greatness. To do otherwise would be to spurn God’s generous gifts to us.

So, how do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as one who is blessed by your creator with amazing gifts and an important mission? Or do you not see that?

And what are your gifts? What greatness are you placed on this Earth to achieve?

Every morning, I share a high energy motivational message right in your email. To sign up free, visit http://motivation.guywhoknowsaguy.com.

If you’d like to talk about your own self perception and what might be holding you back, let’s talk. Click here to schedule a call.

Raise Your Own Minimum Wage

Michael Whitehouse1 Comment

We hear a lot about how hard it is to live on the minimum wage in the United States. It’s true. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. That’s about $250 per week or $1,000 per month. That’s less than the cost of a one bedroom apartment where I live.

In a recent video, I discussed the fact that we must all think about ways to raise our own minimum wage.

Continue reading “Raise Your Own Minimum Wage” →