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July 23, 2008
So Who Are YOU?
There are times when you may look at yourself in the mirror and you may not recognize the stranger you have become.
This is a sign to sit down, take a deep breath and ask yourself "How did I get here?"
What scares me is that I'm not sure if the Jeff of 2008 would even be friends with the Jeff of 1995. But I hope we could find enough things in common to connect and maintain an active friendship.
As we get older our tastes change and we grow. Sometimes from the inside out and sometimes from the outside in. But we are always growing, learning and exploring.
Make the time to get to know the new you. And enjoy the explorations and the discoveries around the way.
Tags: Entrepreneurship, leadership, Entrepreneur, Jeff Pulver
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Posted by jeff on July 23, 2008 09:03 AM | Permalink
Additional resources: Watch PrimeTime TV Shows | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos
Comments
I think it's also easy to look at the past us for reasons to why the current us can't do this or that. Forgetting that a lot has happened in the intervening time that changes who we are, possibly enough that past failings are no longer an issue.
Posted by: Zoe Winters at August 3, 2008 11:32 PM
This has always been a kind of central in my thinking about personal branding and social media.. The old Zen saying, show me the face we had before we were born.. I think gets at it.. this Allan Watts Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVXEiYyZKcY I think is perhaps the best little thing on it..
Who you are.. you know there is this kind of inward mystery.. which is important to have the right relationship to.. for it is from this that we become.. I mean life is a constant process of becoming.. we are all, in many ways I think, more then what we realize our selves to be.. and when we talk about "authenticity" in relationship to our personal brands, there is the question of what we are being authentic to..
Our identity.. who and what we identify our selves with.. there's all this kind of modernism / post modernism thinking on the subject.. polymorphic identity.. there's the branding idea that our identity is, at least in part built on.. our identification with this or that brand.. and perhaps if we follow this line of thought we could think of brand.. not in the usual brand sense.. but more in the Jungian association complex way.. which a brand is anyway.. such a complex.. so what complexes are we identifying our selves with?
We often have this need to cling to conscious rationalizations of.. well whatever.. ways of explaining our motivations.. and all the rest.. and it often feels safer to live in terms of these systems of rationalization.. then in terms of the deeper mysteries..
One of the things I have admired about you is.. your sort of.. disinclination to cling to business plans.. which really are such systems.. I mean what is business but an amplification of natural processes anyway? And if looked at that way.. has not all these years of evolution not built into our very biology something that functions in away that is.. well in many ways, superior to business plans of mice and men?
And then what does this mystery of being mean to the internal conversation of a business and its identity?
I keep thinking our modern thinking on all this kinda stuff.. is sorta terrible.. corrupted by the last few hundred years of.. well how this thinking has evolved.. makes sense in a context that is now in flux.. surely it's a kind of dialectical process.. and now, perhaps particularly as a result of this here social media stuff.. the pendulum is swinging in a new way... but it is probably best to not be attached to the pendulum.. in how we think of this stuff..
Well that's my thoughts on the subject anyway.
Posted by: Matt Searles at July 26, 2008 10:00 AM
The 'me' of 1995...wow. I had a firm vision in mind of who I wanted to become, and I thought I was right on the cusp of becoming that. Had *no* clue what surprises life had in store for me. You know...I've spent a lot of time feeling that I lost ground between 1995 and 2006 (which was the year I became 'mousewords' and got my business moving online). I've gotten into the habit of thinking I have to catch up. But...wow. I think I need to take that moment to get a good look at myself. Maybe I'm closer than I thought I was.
Thank you for this post!
Posted by: mousewords at July 24, 2008 02:48 PM
All good points. And @Alon, you are right about that. :)
Posted by: Jeff Pulver at July 24, 2008 01:08 PM
Jeff, all true, but it is always good to remember those who helped you get from 1995 to 2008... mainly Jeff Pulver Ver1995 :)
See You
Alon
Posted by: Alon Cohen at July 24, 2008 12:58 PM
I like this post, remind me that in the end of the day we need one chair, one bed, one house, and great bicycles to explore the world.
Posted by: ronen at July 24, 2008 09:10 AM
Unlike most people, I frequently do not know who I am. I feel like a blob of play-doh just waiting to take on a shape. Great post, by the way!
Posted by: zomi at July 24, 2008 12:54 AM
I think I generally know who I am but there are times when I worry that I am not the guy I would like to be.
Posted by: Raul at July 23, 2008 02:16 PM
it increses the feeling that I have that I need to give myself more quiet quality time.
Thank you.
Posted by: Orly Braun at July 23, 2008 01:51 PM
I think about that a lot actually. How far I've come in a spiritual way and how my art has changed, and me with it, as 1995 was right before I became connected to the internet.
Posted by: Darren Daz Cox at July 23, 2008 11:36 AM
"Who Are You?" by the Who keeps ricocheting through my mind as I read this post.
13 years is a long, long time.
I like these posts, they make you think a bit differently.
Posted by: Mark Dykeman at July 23, 2008 11:14 AM