By Kenneth Stepp
What a crazy title. How to stay you sounds bizarre. You are you so of course you will stay you. What I’d like for you to do now is to think. Think of something you did as a new single that is totally not who you are. Can you see the road I’m going down now?
Back a number of years ago I was a successful, wealthy, happy businessman. I founded a company that in a few years provided for my family very well. All our ends were getting met in fine fashion. I used to mentor people who wanted to open a small business and try to help all I could.
The very first thing I taught them was this. Decide who you are long before you hang your sign up. What I meant was this. Every small business has ebb and flows. What happens in the lowest valleys will determine what kind of business person you will become. How you handle problems matters.
You wake up one morning and your bank account is empty, you are pressured to pay something you do in fact owe. It caught you by surprise. If you ran your business as a reactionary, you jump up and try to “fix” the situation.
If you have not set a moral code to your business this could be a disaster. You could try to borrow or you could use someone else’s money thinking you’d have it back to them in a couple of days. That almost never works out and you have weakened your level of integrity. The next time it will be easier to hurt others to help you. Easier to do the wrong thing.
So what does this have to do with being single? It’s the human condition. We decide who we are before something happens. In the singles community we would call these standards. And standards decide who you will be in the future.
In the past I have gone through phases. Honestly, I feel like in many of them I was a reactionary myself. I think back on where I’ve been and compare it to where I am and I really understand grace. I have allowed myself to be someone I wasn’t in the past and see who I am now. I call that being blessed.
Have you ever met someone and the chemistry was like a volcano? I have. Have you ever just said, no one will know? I have. Have you ever lied to someone about where you were, why you didn’t text or call, why you didn’t answer, etc etc etc? I have. I don’t feel like I’m an awful human. I’m simply a human.
I’m not here to judge. My goal is to pass down some things that helped me out of that place. It was my old standards I taught in business years ago. Decide who you are before these things happen and they won’t happen.
Set your standards where you want them and your standards will find you. I say that to people all the time. What’s amazing is that it finally happened to me. Who knew?
