Who do you want to be?
I just saw Maria Schriver on the Today Show talking about her book, Just Who Do You Want To Be? She was talking about her identity crisis going from being a journalist to California’s first lady. She said someone came up to her son when they were out somewhere and he asked if his Mom was a model or something and he said, “She’s just a housewife.” She was taken aback, not because she devalued that role, but because she didn’t think of herself that way.
It made me think of how I have so often defined myself by what I do instead of who I am. I think it is a struggle we all face and it changes as we move through our lives. We define ourselves by who we are with different people, by where we work, by the relationships with our families, and by the communities in which we live. Someone once chastised me for describing myself by what I did instead of who I was and it was at that point that I made some serious changes in my life to refocus on what’s really important to me. As we move through life, the “what” usually changes, and as I have grown older, I have discovered that while the “who” still has the basic core, it also changes. I am happy today with the “who” I am as well as the “what” I am. As leaders, parents, co-workers, family members, I encourage you to stop and think about “who you want to be” and whether you are on the right path to get there.
