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Being yourself

One of the best things you can do as you enter an interview is to relax and be yourself. So let us try to take the meaning of 'being yourself' apart so that we can understand and apply it.  

Your different roles

Presumably, to be yourself, you first identify the roles you assume for different people or life segments that you value. For example:

• within a relationship setting - partner, parent, child, sibling, relative
• in an organisation - mentor, employer, employee
• activity in a religious or charitable setting that allows you to contribute or practise spirituality
• passion that defines you (e.g. music, art, writing, sporting activity)

These roles are personal to you and thus different for every individual. Importantly, you give time and energy in these roles. You build and nurture the relationship, the skill or interest.

Your values - the compass

As you fulfill the roles, you also realise there are innate qualities or guidelines that you are forming. These give you a sense of right and wrong. They are the backdrop to what make you choose one path over another, and developing thoughts that inform your decisions and priorities.

These guiding principles are your values. Again, every individual has different values. They may arise from experience and contemplation and be about:

·        fairness

·        compassion

·        ambition

·        integrity

·        perseverance

·        creativity, hardwork, commitment; i.e. just about any subjective quality

Interestingly, as you develop, you may find your values changing as well. When in tune with them, your values are your guiding compass in life.

Benefits - be yourself

When you are yourself, you are:

• comfortable in your own skin
• genuine, not play-acting according to the people around you
• a quietly confident person
• calm in an environment of turbulence
• self-aware

Back to the interview setting

Just imagine this. When you are yourself:

• you answer questions with confidence, but contemplatively
• your responses are genuine and mature, neither impulsive nor irrelevant
• interviewers will appreciate the thought you put in before sharing your response, instead of rattling off a well-rehearsed perfect answer
• interviewers can tell you are not bluffing i.e. saying something just for the sake of it

These derive naturally from your authenticity.

Now, when you are told to 'just be yourself' in preparation for an interview, you have a better awareness of what that calls for. It is a good time to have a heart-to-heart with yourself. A performance coach can also be of tremendous help to you in this process.

Whatever it is, be assured that you hold the answer within you.