Isolate your life and put the sum total of who you are into words. How? First, tell me your life story, then create a Readers Digest version. Narrow down to a single page and summarize. Now, do the same exercise and summarize in a paragraph. Now a sentence.
What if everything you are can be summed up into a single word?
Describe Yourself in One Word: From a story to a readers digest version, then a single page. Summarize your life in a paragraph. Now, pick a word. Are you satisfied with that Word? It's not too late to change. Share on XAre you happy with that Word? Take that Word and apply it to your life. Does it fit? Do others agree with your Word? Be honest. Are you in agreement with the results?
Think about “Honest Abe.” Do you know who this is? Can you agree with the Word that described Abraham Lincoln to young ears via a book? Of course, you must know the context. He may have been honest in his focus on living, but many other words describe him to others.
It’s about perspective and angles. From where you are to the person’s place in your life, you can be described through a life funnel to a single word representing “you” to that person.
Someone in my past took a personality style exam that helped you see that one-word description of yourself. From the back of the room, one of his direct reports asked, “Does it say you are a nitpicker?” He turned amazed. How did you know?
How Do You Know?
Perhaps our personality is welded into permanence at a very young age. We become the “word” even if we never analyze the why’s and where from’s.
That cannot be the only way to know.
Many live differently than they would have ever thought in their younger years. In other words, they become something that none ever saw coming and wouldn’t believe if you factually proved it.
We do not have to become what we take with us into our adult and senior lives. We do change. That Word changes with us.
Imagine the loving mothers of the historically infamous people. Hitler, Ghengis Khan, Custer, Manson, Dalmer, Ridgeway, or any other person with a reputation we only read about in history books. Yes. Even our presidents had a personality only a mother could dote on. Whoops! Did I say that? Sorry, Mr. President!
Your present-day actions do not have to be the description of your life
that will someday be chiseled into your headstone.
Take John Newton. We know him primarily as a man who changed his life from one perspective and became the writer of that famous song, “Amazing Grace.”
You Can Change
Maybe those rose-colored glasses can look into your 70s from wherever you are today and paint a picture of what you think you want to become. Then, start making the change to become instead of riding through life on a stallion that never grows old.
You can become better or worse, smarter or dumber, brilliant or dull. It’s really up to you.
‘The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.’
~Albert Einstein.
Life will take its toll on your path forward, so why not make the best of change when you are younger and more agile moves?
I’ve been receiving AARP news for nearly 18 years. Whoa! That means I’m old, right? Perhaps I’m on the edge of tilting into that downward spiral of being too old for my years. I’m intelligent, sometimes wise, but always willing to improve.
How about you? Join me in the race to change who we’ve been into who we want to be known as.
Describe Yourself in One Word: From a story to a readers digest version, then a single page. Summarize your life in a paragraph. Now, pick a word. Are you satisfied with that Word?
It’s not too late to change.