You are at your very best when you are being ‘more you’.

It’s tempting to see some glorious creature and decide you would like to be more like them. The moment that happens, you begin to give up your power.

The easy tendency is to create a shield that you can wear so that it masks who you really are. The mask prevents you from being authentic.

Attempting to be like someone else drains your power and your communication gets polluted as a result. As a consequence you then can’t convey what you really want to put across and how you feel.

Your messages are filtered by the mask and your truth does not get spoken. Then you come across as false.

In business, this is what is happening when you meet someone and you get a sense they are not authentic. This usually shows up as a doubt in you. It’s your intuition picking up on their diminished power.

If they carry on hiding behind their mask, their inability to keep up the pretence will crack eventually. The energy needed to keep up the shield is huge. After all, they are constantly adapting their behaviour to attempt to be someone they are not.

More powerful for you then is to Be More You. That way you stay in your power and you show up as authentic.

This is very important. When someone in a class sneezes, the normal response is ‘Bless you!’

That might have been a corruption of ‘Be less you’. Who knows?

So my response now is ‘Be more you’.

Ed Percival is a business coach with Shirlaws in Thames Valley. His background is in coaching for impact.