Everyday Resume

Everyday Resume: What are you doing when no one is watching? Stop diminishing your value. 

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A while back I wrote about the concept of what you do when no one is watching, and today I am expanding on that concept. That post focused on the idea that we need to show who we are in all areas of our life. That we don’t need to perform or act a certain way when specific people are around. The way we act around one group or another group doesn’t change who we are. That idea goes further to what we do when no one is around. I finished that post by saying “we do the little things, not because someone is watching, but because that is just what we do.” 

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The person you are shows up behind closed doors. A friend of mine likes to imagine life on camera, asking the question of what would we do when no one else is around if there was a camera following us, showing how we act and show up when there is no show to perform to others. It’s a good theory, but if you truly show up the same behind close doors as you do when you interact with people, you don’t need to worry about life on camera. It’s a good thing to keep and think about in the back of our minds, but it shouldn’t influence what you do. If you act differently because you assume someone is watching, then you aren’t acting from an authentic place. 

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Extending from that, the things we do, the actions we make, and how we show up in all spaces needs to come from a place of authenticity. If we change our behavior to fit into a group or to dim our own light we will never find our space and our voice. We get so caught up with the people we are around and the situations we find ourselves in that we forget about ourselves. I talked about this in a post a couple weeks back about how we need to love and understand ourselves fully and this is just another extension of that. 

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The people and spaces we enter should benefit from our value when we walk into space. We should be proud of ourselves and what we bring. We should not have to diminish ourselves so that others may feel comfortable around us. When we show up in spaces we deserve to shine. We shouldn’t have to change our behavior and diminish our value or quiet our voice to feel that we belong. We should feel that we belong because the people around us want to see our success and our light shine. 

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In case no one has told you, but when you walk into a room people pay attention. When you post on instagram or have a coffee with a friend, people pay attention. When you use your voice to talk about something you care about, people pay attention. If you are in situations where you feel like you have to dim to fit in or dim to get your way, you’re in the wrong place. Because people are going to notice that and start to question you. 

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Maybe, I am writing all of this for my own mental and own affirmation that I do bring value. That regardless if one person, or one hundred people, or a thousand people read this when I walk into a place and I show up authentically I have built up an everyday resume that shows my value and the impact I have on people. It’s the constant pursuit of doing the little things. Showing up day by day and refusing to be an inauthentic version of ourselves is how we get better. What we do when no one is watching and having that be consistent with how we show up. 

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Everyday we get a choice to show up, sometimes there are not so good days, sometimes there are good days, but all we can do is keep showing up authentically in all aspects of our lives. Once we do that, once we refuse to dim, once we choose what matters to us, that’s when we start truly living. There is no one trick to getting strong, you just have to work at it everyday. You have to choose what you want to be and then go out and do it.

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