Earlier this summer I was at a really cool event called I Heart My Biz and I got an opportunity to meet a number of women who I had recently been in an online program with. For the most part we had only interacted via the group site and class calls, so it was really cool to meet in person and give each other a hug.

Everyone was just as I had imagined them to be.

Funny enough, I seemed to be a bit of a surprise to a few of the women that I met.  One woman actually came up to me and said that she expected me to be a biker chick and ride up on a Harley!  She told me that I did not fit into the image that she had of me.

This brings up an interesting topic….the images and labels that people project onto you (or you to them).

How many of you feel that you need to live up to an image that someone has of you?

Who out there has felt trapped by a particular label that someone has put on you?

This is tricky stuff!

It is hard enough to be yourself to begin with, but it gets much more difficult when other folks begin to label you and cast you in a specific role.

When it comes down to it, someone else’s image of you has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.

Let’s take the woman who expected me to be a biker chick. Because I am not afraid to show off my tattoos, and talk about having piercings, and I speak boldly about making your own rules, and creating your kick-ass dream life, in her mind, I must be a biker chick. That says more about her experience with life than mine.

None of those things define ME at all. The reality is that I am all those things plus a whole lot more. I can be shy when I first meet people, and a bit stand offish on crowds, and I have a soft vulnerable side that I also show. This is what was so confusing for this woman. I was not fitting into the image that she had of me.

I am so many things!  I do my best to resist the labels that other people stick on me, and I try not to get caught up in other people’s images of me.

It would be really hard to grow and change and expand if I did.

It would limit my ability to be me.