What name do you give yourself?
I recently heard this quote on perhaps one of the greatest podcasts I’ve come across in recent memory, A History of the World in 100 Objects, by the BBC.
“It happens too often that people are saddled with the names given to them by their conquerors.”
Not only can we see this in a historical perspective, but we can see it in our own lives. What names were you called as a child? Do you still carry those around with you? Do you let them define how you see yourself? We all have early failures, are you saddled with a self-perception based on those despite overcoming them?
Maybe you need to be freed from the names given to you by your critics.
How about your business? Does a project fizzle because your organization seems to think it is a dud? Did it have potential, but soon jumped the rails due to early criticism?
Maybe that project needs to be freed from the name given to it by its critics.