Becoming Your Signature Self

BECOMING YOUR SIGNATURE SELF
By
Bill Cottringer

What do Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Jack Canfield, Tiger Woods, Nichole Kidman, Katie Keric, and Alex Rodriguez all have in common besides being extraordinarily good looking, rich and famous, and masters of their trades? Better yet, what do you have in common with these people?

We are all striving to close the gap between who we are and who we want to be, and the elusive, magical gap-closer is being our signature self. This middle ground is the only place where you can ever achieve real happiness, genuine success and solid inner piece. Some people seem to become their signature self quicker and easier than others, but it is always hard work to succeed at. Success inevitably involves reconciling your human and spiritual parts and getting to the blissful “golden mean” where there is a healthy balance between complicated chaos and simple order.

There are five main paths to your signature self:

• Good Appearance
• Likeable Personality
• Admirable Character
• Smart Choices
• Basic Optimism

GOOD APPEARANCE

Unless you are lucky enough to be born with movie star drop-dead handsome or gorgeous looks, you have to work hard at showing what you have in the best light. This involves accentuating your best features like eyes, hair, mouth or body; practicing good grooming and posture habits; exercising and keeping fit and healthy; being energetic; and dressing stylishly. Actually what you are after here is developing a likeable, positive presentation that facilitates success and generally comes about as a result of practicing these other things below. When use basic optimism to make smart choices to practice a likeable personality and admirable character, you will have a good appearance

LIKEABLE PERSONALITY

A likeable personality is made up of several behaviors that project a comfortable sense of realness and trustworthiness to others. You are more likely to be perceived as likeable when you are honest, polite, positive, empathetic, sincere, energetic, listening and laughing. On the contrary, you are more likely to be perceived as unlikeable when you are dishonest, rude, negative, insensitive, phony, lethargic, talkative and morose.

Having a likeable personality opens many success doors. There is probably no better way to increase your likeability than to practice the Golden Rule of treating others the way you want to be treated. After all what goes around comes around.

ADMIRABLE CHARACTER

An admirable character comes about when you start the challenging process of reconciling your human and spiritual selves; but before you can do this you have to reconcile your good and bad selves into an integrated whole. The way to do this is to shift attention away from all the outer, ephemeral things your mind thinks you want, to focusing on the required nourishment of your inner soul needs.

Your soul needs to give and get unconditional love and acceptance and to practice wisdom, understanding, compassion, unselfish service to others, and creativity. The true test of character always comes with adversity and temptation, and you can only use what you have. Much like a good appearance, an admirable character comes about as a result of doing all these other things.

SMART CHOICES

Very successful people who have become their signature self have given up one very inhibiting illusion, that being the illusion of control. These people realize that success has nothing to do with controlling life and other people, but more about letting go of that illusion and giving into the natural flow of life.

When you let go of the control illusion and give into life, you begin to acknowledge the simple but important choices to be made from day to day, that can get you a little closer to where you want to be. For example, the next time something uncomfortable happens to you, you have a choice of reacting either positively or negatively—which will get you closer to where you want to be?

BASIC OPTIMISM

Being your signature self and achieving the success that comes with it is often a catch-22 situation—you have to do it before you get it. When life confronts you with good and bad things, the only thing that is really under your control is your explanation of and reaction to these things.

You can be pessimistic in thinking that more bad than good happens, that you don’t deserve good times, and that the future is bleak and hopeless; or you can be optimistic in thinking that good outweighs the bad, that everybody deserves good times, and that the future can be anything we make it to be.

The odd part of choosing how you explain and react to the positive and negative things in life, is that the particular choice itself seems to gather more evidence to support and validate it. Like a self-fulfilling prophesy. Knowing this reality, it wouldn’t make any sense not to be optimistic.

If you choose to be optimistic and positive about being your signature self and hopeful about enjoying all the happiness, success and piece that self brings, you will be actively doing all these things that lead to it. We are all growing into our signature selves, just with different efforts and different timing.