“I am a teacher teaching kindergarten students.” As she said that, I saw her voice going downward in intonation and her breathing got a bit shallow. It was evident to me that she wasn’t really in love with her current role and she was looking for a greater purpose and meaning in her life. If she continued to have that identity of herself, she will not be able to get people to see her extraordinary skills and potential. Not only that, she will limit herself from having and achieving big dreams that can otherwise have an enormous & beautiful impact on the lives of so many children.
This conversation between me and Isha, the prodigious school teacher is happening during the Charisma Intensification Program in Thailand. Now the beautiful thing about Charisma Intensification Program is that in the guise of telling the story of their lives, people actually revisit their past experiences and change the meaning & emotions they attach to them. And when that happens, a new, more charismatic identity emerges naturally by the end of 4 days, when participants deliver the story of their life- a story that has an undeniable impact on the spirits of other people. I call this entire process the ‘Identity Reimprint’.
So when she said, “I am a teacher teaching kindergarten students” in that particular tone and physiology, I asked her to come up with 10 different stories that most define who she really is. And I started writing the stories that she narrated to me on the whiteboard while the other 15 participants listened intently to the conversation. She told me series of inspiring stories of how she helped a student get over reading disabilities and taught him to spell, how she helped a girl get over stammering and how she helped a fellow teacher overcome her feelings of nervousness & low self-worth and helped her land a job in a month that she wasn’t getting since one year, how she organised an annual event once that she wanted every child to be a part of and how she actually stood up against the majority of the school staff who suggested otherwise. And how after an interesting class of hers, one of the students ran up to her and said, “Thank you!”. As she told each one of these stories, her eyes only beamed with more energy and excitement.
At that moment, I immediately turned to the participants and asked, “What changed in your perception about Isha after hearing these stories?”. The participants came up descriptions like, “She is a rare teacher”, “She is a leader who challenges the status quo”, “She is very dedicated”, “She cares deeply for children”, “She is extremely dedicated”. As she heard these comments, her eyes started welling up with tears. At the end, someone said, “She is an Educationist, who exhibits all the qualities of leadership, authority, maturity and care towards children” And I wrote that word against her name: EDUCATIONIST.
You see, there is always a difference between a current role and the long-term intention. Isha’s current role was that of a teacher but the long-term intention is to make a huge impact as an Educationist, Leader and Entrepreneur. Teaching the kindergarten students will be one of a hundred roles she will play while working towards the long-term intention of making that huge impact.
Do you think that this shift in her personal identity will drive her to learn and create bigger things? Will it evolve the way she teaches and even looks at children, their lives and their challenges? Will it change the way other people look at her? Absolutely!
Let us say that she sincerely believes that she is an Educationist. And after a year she accidentally rubs shoulders with the President of United States. And the President asks Isha, “What do you do?” Which answer will be more impactful? “I am a teacher teaching kindergarten students” or “I am an Educationist and Entrepreneur who works with kindergarten students and evolves geniuses out of them.” So this shift will enable her to elevate her positioning not only in her own eyes, but also in the eyes of others! And this is incredibly powerful!
There is a core quality of top achievers: they always see their identity as being way bigger than their current role or job. And they realise that this role and so many other life experiences, skills and talents they have acquired in their lifetime until now are only preparing them to do something much greater!
Let me tell you how!
This goes back almost a year ago and I was doing a talk show in which I was doing one-on-one LIVE Consultations. Then, I met a lady who had been a homemaker for the last 10 years and a mother for the past 6 years. She wanted to start a business but when she met me, she asked me, “Is it the right thing to start my business at this point?”. When I asked her what she meant by that, she explained, “I have lost 10 years of my life because I have been at home. I have just been a mother all this while”
To this, I frowned and said, “No! All this while you were at home, you were developing a fine intuition that will give you an unparallelled advantage in your business.” I told her, “The intuition to know when a child will cry, when he/she needs food even when the child can’t speak, skills in managing the household and multitask effectively and so many other capabilities that you developed while parenting your child with so much care & commitment, has only prepared you to grow a business more easily and fast!”
She looked at me shell-shocked. As I was looking at her I got reminded of a very powerful story I had read in the Bible. “This goes back to 6th Century BC. David was a young shepherd boy who used to take care of the sheep. While taking care of the sheep, he used to chase away lions and wolves with slingshots. When Israelites and Philistines got into a war, he has to fight the big giant named Goliath. And everybody is just scared to fight. David steps forward and volunteers to fight. He doesn’t know why he is saying that. He just believes in his God. And others are thinking, he has never been in a war before, how can he fight. When he goes to fight, he takes this stone, slings it and releases it at Goliath. It hits Goliath on his forehead and Goliath falls onto the ground, either dead or unconscious. And then David runs towards his body, takes his sword and beheads Goliath. And the Israelis win the war.
Today, they are proving scientifically that given how quickly those stones could travel and given the density, the impact of those slings were as high as bullets. But the wisdom and real skill is in getting the precision with which the stone could target at that speed. Some people say, David just did it on the spot but I would say that David had been preparing for that moment all his life.”
At that moment when I finished telling her this story, she looked at me with her eyes wide open and pupils dilated. Then, she looked down as if processing what she had just learned and then looks at me and smiles. And I could sense at that moment, that something profound had shifted in her and she felt ready and confident to start her business.
The truth is that all great things you see in this world once started with a feeling of absolute certainty that accompanied a huge vision in the minds of a few, rare individuals who saw themselves much greater than any of the jobs or roles they performed. Yet, they believed that these roles played a significant role in preparing them to do something unprecedented.
In my own organisation, all of us see ourselves as way bigger than our current roles. From an outsider's perspective, two of our team members are engaged in content curation, video production and editing, two are engaged in advertising, two are engaged in sales and one in customer support and sales. But in our own eyes, none of us see ourselves as marketers, salespeople or customer support executives. Those are just roles that we are playing at this moment. These roles will change with time, as each of us evolves new talents and skills. Each of us sees himself/herself as the creator of a billion-dollar business. Do you think that is having a profound impact on our business & life decisions about what we choose to do, learn and achieve over the next month. You bet! Regardless of how big or small the roles that we take up at this point, we see ourselves as creators, inventors, innovators, disruptors, legacy makers and entrepreneurs. And each of us believes that all of what we are doing at the moment is just preparation for something greater, something that is going to disrupt several industries and change the world in unprecedented ways forever!
So I want to ask you- what have you been preparing for all your life? Think of the several of the roles that you have performed in your life: in your family, in your profession(s), in your passions. Really go back into your past and think of the most significant life experiences that made you who you are right now within each of those roles you have performed. And as you continue to ponder on what have you really been preparing for all your life, you may just discover that who you are is is just way greater than each of the several roles you have played, yet all of these roles have played a critical role in making you, YOU! And you may just start evolving a new identity, like Isha evolved that of an Educationist.
As for Isha, ever since that day, she hasn’t looked at herself the same way. On the final day of Charisma Intensification Program, she delivered her life story in a way that touched each of our hearts profoundly. And I am only curious to know how all this is going evolve into a purpose/vision that will change the world in significant ways - a purpose/vision that will culminate into a LEGACY that is so meaningful & beautiful!
