Episode 15: Defining what you are

What is your criteria for assigning yourself an attribute or claiming that you are something or their particular activity is something people should think of you for?
I've been thinking a lot on this recently as I've been sort of paging through, in a lot of cases, LinkedIn, looking for employment opportunities, stuff like that.
And you see people there, and I'm going to pick on LinkedIn.
It just so happens to be where I've been spending some time.
But, you know, I think this is a common thing.
You see people making claims.
I, I'm a speaker.
I'm a presenter.
I'm a, I'm a leader.
I'm, you know, these, these, these nouns that they use for themselves, that they lay claim or ownership over, that they say are part of who they are.
And I struggle with this.
Um, in my professional life, I have done many things.
I have spoken.
I have spoken internationally.
But I don't speak all the time.
So am I a speaker?
I have led large scale digital transformation projects at an enterprise level.
Does that make me an expert in digital transformation?
Does that make me an enterprise project leader?
I struggle with this because, though, to me, those are things that I do or that I have done.
And there are many examples like this.
I, I could go through any number of things.
I, I have built many websites over my life.
Am I a web developer?
Sometimes I have designed those sites.
Am I a web designer?
At what point, having done something with yourself, with your, you know, at what point after you have done something, are you willing to say you are that thing or that you are an expert in that thing or whatever?
I don't, I don't, I don't, I know that those are different wordings.
It's different to say I'm an expert in such and such versus I am such and such.
For instance, it is a different sentence to say I am a speaker versus I am an expert speaker or I am an expert in speaking.
I know those are different statements.
But when presented to the general public, I think they're almost the same.
If, if you on a profile of yours say I am a speaker, what you are putting out there is to say you are implying that you are an expert in that particular thing.
If I say I am a gymnast, but it turns out I only went to the, you know, I went to a gym once and did a somersault.
So that's very disingenuous, but I, I, I know that's stretching the metaphor a little bit, but I think in a lot of cases, this is how people approach it.
They'll do something once or twice at often a fairly surface level and then claim it is a thing that they are or a thing that they do regularly.
And I struggle with this because on the one hand, professionally, you want to put your best foot forward.
You, when you do something, you should, you should lay claim to that.
You should say, I have done this.
I have this experience.
It's not that you should not do that.
Um, in the case of my very simple, uh, silly gymnast metaphor, at least I went to a gym and did a somersault once, right?
I am not devoid of somersault experience.
I have done that one time.
I know this is a ridiculous thing and I'll, I'll drop the metaphor, but let's take it on a different level.
Um, once I, at what point can I claim to being a speaker?
Is it after I've spoken at one event, two events?
Do I need to have been paid to speak?
The people I spoke to, is there a minimum crowd size?
If I've only spoken to one person, two people, 10 people, 20?
How about if I speak to 10 people twice and five people once, am I a speaker?
Then I get to the other side of things, which is more of a timeline thing.
How long is it after you have done a thing that you can still claim that that's an attribute of yours?
I'll give you two examples from, and I've, I've, I've been using this throughout the course of the episode,
but I'll give you two examples.
One example for me, again, I've been harping on speaking.
I bring that up because I've been wrestling for a while now, whether or not to list in my professional capacity that I am a speaker.
The reason I struggle with this is because I always very much enjoyed speaking.
I have done many, many, many presentation styles, uh, things.
I have even spoken at an invited, at invited events internationally, um, in Scandinavia.
Some of the best work and most rewarding and interesting stuff I've ever done in my life.
Um, but the last time I did that was about eight years ago, I guess seven.
Is there like a statute of limitations on this?
Am I still a speaker?
Like I didn't speak during COVID during those years of like lockdowns and whatnot.
And since then I've mostly only done presentations for small, um, intra company,
intra organizational groups of people.
I haven't spoken out in seven years.
Am I still a speaker?
Do I still list that?
I would like to, because I would like to be engaged to do more of that work.
Cause I miss doing that work, but I have a hard time telling someone in a professional capacity that I am a speaker.
However, I can say I have been a speaker, I have spoken, but to just claim ownership over being a speaker is difficult for me.
I also, uh, at a point in my life was I worked in a diesel mechanic shop.
Can I claim that I'm a diesel mechanic?
I haven't done it in almost 20 years, but when I did back then, I did it, you know, for about four or five years on and off.
Cause I was doing it, uh, interspersed between semesters in college.
Can I claim that I'm a diesel mechanic after not having worked on a diesel vehicle?
After having worked on them for four or five years and then not working on them for the next 20?
I just find this to be an interesting question of, of, of how one defines themselves and what one attributes themselves with.
And it brings up, I think, uh, uh, uh, sort of almost a more philosophical question.
Once you get past the kind of surface level of like, cause I know that a lot of this has been kind of surface level of, you know, what should I put on my professional profile or whatever.
But I think there's a deeper question too.
Once you move beyond, you know, whatever you're putting on your LinkedIn profile or whatever else.
And that question is, at what point do you define yourself by things that no longer define you?
And what does that look like?
Is it event specific?
Is it time specific?
What are the factors that go into how you define yourself over time?
If I was really, really into a particular activity 10 years ago, but haven't touched it since, but I still in my head believe that I am that thing.
Am I still that thing?
Even having not done it for 10 years?
One of the reasons I've been thinking about this is because for, you know, a while I, in my life, I, I do point to some of these things and I'll tell people, oh, you know, I was, I was a diesel mechanic or, uh, I'm a musician or, you know, some of these things that maybe I haven't picked up in a while.
You know, I'm right now where I'm recording this, I have guitars all around me that I probably haven't played in at least two years.
I used to play quite heavily.
Other things took, you know, took a precedent in my life for a while.
Haven't really done much of that.
Do I call myself a musician?
If I do call myself a musician, am I defining myself by something that I am no longer, that I, that I am no longer?
All of this is mostly just an open question.
Um, I would love to hear thoughts from anybody, but at the end of the day, I, I, I, I wonder about this and I would encourage you to think a little bit through your life and experience.
It's in terms of what you are willing to and not willing to define yourself by and why.
Is it a time thing?
Is it because the thing was very pivotal?
Is the answer just that these are activities that you do and they shape you in some way, but it's always disingenuous to call yourself a specific thing because we are many things.
Food for thought.