Who you really are, deep down inside, is defined by what you think, feel, and act. Your character is what you actually think, feel, and do, not what you wish you thought, felt, or did.1
Instead of defining who they are by how they have actually thought, felt, and acted until now, people like thinking of themselves in terms of how they wish they were, ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
Do you confuse your potential with your actuality? Do you claim motives that are contradicted by your actions? Do you give yourself credit for attributes that you are on your way to developing, or worse, that you only hope to one day develop?
How you wish you were isn’t a good way to measure your present value, but it is a wonderful way to increase your future value. Instead of using how you wish you were to determine your present value , use it to determine your present behavior .
When you surprise yourself by believing, thinking, or feeling less noble than you wish you were, recognize these moments as opportunities to self-correct. When your behavior deviates from how you wish you were, enumerate changes you need to make to align yourself to your ideal and commit to making them.
Footnotes
- 1. In systems analysis, there is a heuristic that states: “the purpose of a system is what it does.” Stafford Beer, who coined the phrase, observed that there is “no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.” This heuristic should be universally applied to people. ↩