Now imagine that I take you to a party and introduce you to a stranger and they say, “pleased to meet you….tell me about yourself”; what would you feel comfortable saying that begins with, “I’m………”
Would you say, “I’m a chef”; or perhaps, “I’m a restaurateur”?
If your goal is to have your own restaurant, or even a chain of restaurants, and you see yourself as a ‘chef’, you are likely to respond to events and do the things a chef would do because that’s who you are. However, what would a successful restaurateur think and do in these same circumstances?
Arguably this is what lays behind the difference between the good performers and the great performers.
I once worked with a woman who’s goal was to win the female cup in the World Rally Car Championship. When I asked her to tell me about herself she simply said, “I’m a TV presenter and I do a lot of professional
You meet two people who both want to have their own successful restaurant and would like you to invest. One says he’s a chef, the other says she’s a restaurateur. Who are you going to back?
Question is, what can you do to change your sense of identity? My version of this question for my clients is, “who do you need to be to achieve this goal?” If your goal is to be head chef then the answer is you need to start seeing yourself as a head chef. Years ago when I worked corporately, my boss told me if I wanted to be marketing director all I had to do was act like one now (when I was market manager) and then I’d be the obvious choice; “do the job and then we’ll give you the title”!
So one simple thing you can do to start to change the way you see yourself is to ‘act as if…’.
When a situation arises you simply ask yourself the question, “what would a successful head chef do right now?” – then do the same thing. If you keep acting just like a successful head chef you’ll probably get the same results as a successful head chef and you will gradually realise something about yourself - as the saying goes, ‘if it sounds like a duck and it acts like a duck, it’s probably a duck!
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