Perception Matters: Carry Yourself How You Want to be Seen
You can’t expect others to take you seriously in one area of life if you’re acting and carrying yourself a different way in another area of life.
Today I want to talk about people’s perception and the importance of carrying ourselves in a way that we want to be perceived by the people around us. And that means that all times, no matter who’s looking, who’s watching, in all areas of life and leading this legacy lifestyle, we need to carry ourselves how we want to be seen. We want to be taken seriously in life, in business, in relationships, in our fitness, in our nutrition, and our spirituality. And that means we need to take those things seriously.
You can only expect to be perceived based on how it is that you are putting yourself out there.
For example, if you’re putting yourself out there like a fool or acting like an idiot on social media or out in public, then people will perceive you that way in every aspect of your life. You can’t expect to be taken seriously in business if you’re all over social media acting like a fool, getting into arguments with people, cussing all the time, and basically acting like the people you want to do business with, or the other people in your industry can’t or don’t see how you’re acting. If you think you can separate your personal and your business from each other, and go out and get into all kinds of arguments about nonsensical, just useless message chats about politics, and this, that, and the other thing on Facebook, you need to understand that, that perception is going to carry over into how people think about and perceive you in business.
The same thing applies to your family. If you want or expect certain things out of your kids, out of your wife, yet you act in a whole other manner when you deal with them, you’re going to run into trouble. If you’re not willing to do those same things, not willing to carry yourself in a similar manner that you expect from them, well that’s what they call a double standard. It’s not going happen. You are not going to get the reactions and the actions that you want, out of your wife or your kids if you’re acting one way and expecting another. This is literally what “lead by example” means.
However you put yourself out there, and lead yourself, and carry yourself, is how others are going to reciprocate to you, no matter what area of life it is.
Like I said, in business if you’re putting yourself out there on social media for all to see—and there are many people that see you and your posts they may not engage, but they are watching—then you need to be aware of how your behavior on those platforms influences they way people perceive you. Everybody’s watching; there’s always somebody watching. And perhaps that doesn’t matter to you. Maybe you just don’t care if people see you behaving that way, but just be aware that however you carry yourself, no matter what area of life that you are in, number one, people are watching. Number two, you can’t expect others to take you seriously in one area of life if you’re acting and carrying yourself a different way in another area of life.
What you put out is what people are going to pick up.
If you’re putting one vibe out and then expecting people to pick up a different one, that’s just not going to happen. And you need to be okay with that because you need to understand that however you hold yourself, carry yourself, act, speak, commit, and no matter the decisions you make, it will all influence the way people see and respond to you. People are not going to give you the benefit of the doubt. They’re going to take you for what you put out there. They are going to take you at face value.
A big part of me is all about putting yourself out there, putting your message out there, knowing that not everyone is going to agree with you. The point of this post is not to tell you to conform. Or to hide your truth. The point is for you to recognize that whatever you choose to share, however you decide to show up inside your community, whether online or off, is going to affect the way people see you. And it’s going to influence how they choose to interact with you.
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