Sharing Resources to Help You Grow Personally, Professionally & Financially

Sometimes it helps to get a little dose of encouragement—along with a good cup of coffee!—to start the day. Today we discuss "identify."

Hopefully the message below will help you get off to a good start for the week.  Please feel free to forward the newsletter on to others that you think would benefit from the content.

Identify

Living in Chicago, I take my life into my own hands every time the topic of baseball comes up. I am a proud, life-long St. Louis Cardinals fan!

When you identify as a Cardinals fan in Chicago

In Chicago that is DANGEROUS, as a very large portion of the population identifies with the Chicago Cubs. I will spare you the FACTS on which is the wise choice if you want to associate with the BETTER team, as experience has shown me that this is rarely a fruitful endeavor.

Many ways we identify in life

The Cubs-Cardinal rivalry does a great job of highlighting how we all have a tendency to identify with certain things that are near and dear to our heart. And while sports allegiances are important, they pale in comparison to many of the other ways we identify in our lives.

Core beliefs and identity

What is most important, in my opinion, is to recognize that each and every individual we encounter has a core set of beliefs that they hold to be true—a core set of beliefs that they identify with.

Showing others love, no matter what

And it is critical to building strong relationships with others that we acknowledge their identities. It does NOT mean that we share their perspective—I’m NEVER going to be a Cubs fan! —but we do need to show them love, no matter what their belief set is. (For Cubs fans I also show them sympathy, but I don’t want to beat that horse too hard!)

That brings us to this week’s question:

• What do you identify with?

Thanks for sharing a bit of your time with me this Monday morning.  

Have a great week!

Blog post from this past week:

Monday Morning Motivation - Validation