Me and titles : Enemies to lovers

**To be edited

I don’t really do titles.

No I’m not an insecure partner - I’m talking those other professional titles. Artist, teacher, musician, engineer and so on so forth.

It feels like a getting a giant label slapped on my back of that tells the world what I do and I consequently become doomed to be just that. It feels like getting thrown into a box of assumption and stereotypes and that’s only who you are seen as now.

Accountant? You are a boring person that sit with horrible posture at a desk and stares at excel sheets all day.

It seem that titles aren’t of much use then?

Yeah no way I’m taking that as an answer. So I dug deeper.

Here are the three ways that I’m trying to make titles make sense to me.

1. That label being slapped on you can be useful.

Think of it more as an access card rather being strapped around your neck. It opens locked doors.

Titles helps you justify things. Titles helps bring down walls you trapped yourself in.

Scared to take out a notebook in public? Think that you’re a writer. You’re a writer. You’re a writer. yo You are a writer who writes things that are meant to be written. It’s okay for me to write everywhere, anywhere and anytime.

It makes a lot of sense this way.

Remember that thing about being put in boxes -well you can use these exact same stereotypes to get you where you need to be.

Here’s a story of how limiting myself to a box helped me do more - be more.

For some time now, I somehow decided for myself that I am the hustler entrepreneur. Boots on the grounds, going from places to places, having that human interaction and getting things done.

Then I had the idea for a platform, one that I wanted to build it myself. I had (actually still having) to overcome the bias of thinking I’m not tech savy enough to make it work.

So I threw myself in a box.

Today I am a software engineer. I will think stepwise and logically at how to tackle problems. That helped.

I also reminded myself of all the times I’ve engineered solutions before because chances are, whatever titles you want to get to next, it has some overlapping skill sets from other titles.

The bias towards action from the hustler mindset made me find answers to my questions of how do I build this shit. My creative side of make it exist then make it better helped me ship out stuff faster. It helped.

2. Titles doesn’t help you justify doing things. It justify the lack there of.

In the case of the writer, it justify the lack of the “conformity” to write in public transport for instance. The examples are infinite. An athelete? it make sense that you skipped the party to wake up early to workout. An artist? that explains your style. etc etc.

Titles provide freedom. (add an anti thesis here)

Maybe not freedom per say but it give us a sandbox to play within. It gives us the lego pack to build stuff. Creativity whithin a box is much easier than creativity whitihni the big and vast universe.

 3. A title is too short, we need more.

There’s also the perspective of scaping titles all together. Not get rid of it no but to give a more open insight on who one might be.

One word is not merely enough of an insight into what I do. And honestly, kinda boring.

Books have summaries at back of them. Movies have trailers. What we, whole complex intriguing individuals only have titles?

Borrowed this idea from Simon Alexander in his Deep Dive podcast Here. Why not add a little spice to who we are. Simon is a life coach and when people ask him what does he do, he replies with “I enlighten peoples imaginiation of what is truly possible so they can live a better story.”

He himself said he got inspired from a public speaker who “Saved people from boredom since before you were born”

The host Ali Abdaal funnily but maybe like everyone else asked, dont you have some imposter syndrome saying that? Simon was saying that with a lot of sincerity.

Simon’s explanation boils down to this: It’s all about whats authentic to you.

Theres always two sales to be made. The second sell is selling ourselves to other people. But the first one is selling ourselves to us. If youve done that, you can be anything.

To wrap this up, heres some things ive been doing. Im a software engineer now, an artist, a lawyer while not forgetting the essence oof my core skills.

Some ideas I’ve gotten for a trailer is:

• All I do is chase attractive women. Really what I do is follow my curiosity wherever it takes me. At the moment im working on x and y

• I sell dreams to people. In my writing I make them think everything is possible and in business well Im selling a product solving a need arent I.