what you present

Dear Reader,

A client mentioned once that she'd been the reliable friend in her group since she was about nineteen. She said it as a passing detail, but I kept thinking about it afterward. Nineteen. She was in her forties. Whatever she figured out back then about how to be around people had worked well enough that she'd never had much reason to look at it again.

I think a lot of how we come across got settled earlier than we realize. Most of us found something that went over well, usually before we had much say in it, and it kept going over well, so we kept doing it. You can usually spot the result in what people come to you for. Someone calls you when they need a calm voice. Nobody expects you to be the one crying at the wedding.

So maybe just notice what you tend to put out, and how long you've been doing it that way. What people count on you for. What would surprise them. Whether you'd make the same choices now that you did back when you first landed on them.

A lot of it probably still fits, and there's no sense pulling apart something that's working. But some of it might be a call made by a nineteen-year-old who was doing the best they could with what they knew.

Yours in the journey,

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