Declare Who You Are

As I said yesterday, Seth Godin (Stanford MBA '86) is one of my favorite thought leaders.  He is guest blogging for renowned cartoonist and overall creative force Hugh LacLeod this week and I thought this post was also extremely relevant to anyone starting the b-school application journey.

Remember Who You Are

Seth states that when people tell you to "Remember who you are", it's usually meant as "Remember who we think you are."  It's usually used as a thinly veiled comment to pull people back rather than to seek the truth about one's nature and potential.  However, Seth beautifully writes:

...Art, whether it’s the drawing art that Hugh does or the business art that a great Wall Street trader does or the customer service art that Tony Hsieh at Zappos espouses… that sort of art isn’t limited by social boundaries. When you connect and change another human being, when you create upside wherever you go, then who you are is decided by you, not by them.

Let’s change the mantra, then, from “remember who you are,” to “decide who you are.”

Decide to be the generous, change-making, scarifying, delighting, over-the-topping dreamer you’re capable of being.

And when applying to business schools, I say we take it even one step further.  Decide who you are, then declare it in the most sincere, believable, and personal way to the world.  Take a stance, declare yourself, and embody all the attributes it takes to become that vision of you.  If you succeed in doing that, then you have succeeded and answered to yourself regardless of the outcome of that essay.