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Most of us have experienced listening to people preface their commentary with something along lines of, “I’m not trying to place blame on anyone but…” In an effort to save face, people sometimes try to soften their painful commentary with prefaces such as the one above. They perceive themselves as remaining innocent while delivering some form of criticism or bad news. As these people attempt to get the best of both worlds; remaining innocent, as well as delivering hard hitting truths, they generate disdain from their listeners in the process.
People who attempt to divert responsibility of their words aren’t generally liked by those around them. If you get into a habit of prefacing your words and attempting to steer how your words are perceived, you’ll find that your results don’t turn out according to plan. Controlling how others perceive your words through explicit methods such as dictating how you want to be understood is lazy behavior. This article will try to motivate you to never explicitly state how you want others to perceive your words and actions, but rather, to allow the results of your words and actions to speak for themselves.
What You Label Yourself As, Can’t Differ From What You Really Are
It is painful to listen to someone explicitly label themselves as something they are not. We lose respect for people who speak but do not act. We look down on those who boast about going to the gym while not having the results to show for it. Those who tell us how hard they work every day without the results to show for it serve to distance us from them rather than attract. Unless people see the results of someone going to the gym every day, or the results of someone’s everyday grind on a business idea they’ve come up with, they don’t want to hear about the journey toward attaining those goals.
Labeling yourself as something that others have trouble believing will motivate them to lose their respect for you. They will notice that you’re trying to mold their perception of you with words rather than actions. They’ll perceive you as taking the easy road of changing their perception of you, and will instead perceive you in a way which you don’t intend and can’t control.
Allow Results to Speak for Themselves If You Want to Get Noticed
The rule is therefore simple. If you want to get noticed in your achievement of the goals you’ve set for yourself, then your only option is to achieve those goals. It may sound simple by nature, but it is a difficult rule to follow. The goals we set for ourselves are seldom easy to attain. If the goal is worth attaining, then it will be difficult to attain. We get impatient with waiting for results, and tend to get lazy with our attempts to get people to notice how much work we’re putting into achieving our goals.
All the work you put into achieving your desired outcomes in life will be ignored by those around you. It is only when your results are evident, that people will begin to perceive you in a favorable light.
People will perceive you by the results you achieve. The result of successfully placing blame on someone else at work will speak louder than your attempts to make your audience believe that you’re not trying to do so. The results of going to the gym will speak louder than your attempts to tell people how many days a week you visit it. Know that the perception others have of you is fully dependent on the results of your actions and words, and do not try to morph the perception others have of you through explicit intervention.