Your mother cared about you, and thought about you all the time.  Your father may have thought about you too. Do you believe that your boss or clients think about you all the time?  Forget it, that’s an illusion.  They are thinking about the big number one – how do they get ahead?  The important people in your professional life think about you occasionally and without much depth.

I find that life is full of illusions.  Some illusions are uniquely personal (such as I can drive better than anyone else on the road!) while others are common for most of us.  The illusion that “everyone is paying attention to me and what I think” is extremely common.  I believe it has its roots in our childhood experience. If we were raised with love and positive attention, we tend to expect the same from the rest of the world.

If you think everyone is paying attention to you, you have been enchanted with a professional illusion.  There are good and bad consequences to this illusion.  If you understand that significant people are not paying close attention, you can manage your perceptions deftly for greater impact.

The good news is that you can establish yourself with the qualities you desire.  Perceptions rule, and most people only make shallow interpretations of who you are. Since most people are not paying close attention, perceptions can be built intentionally by the astute leader.

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Call me if you would like to explore your inner leader.