decide who you want to be before you arrive
Most of us walk into situations by accident.
We arrive carrying whatever mood, stress or distraction the day has dealt us so far. A difficult morning bleeds into the afternoon. One conversation shapes the next. Without thinking, we let circumstance decide who turns up.
But there’s another option.
You can decide who you will be, before you arrive.
If you know how you want to act before you arrive somewhere, the chances of you doing so increase significantly.
If you know how you want to interact with someone before the conversation begins, you’re far more likely to show up as the person you intend to be.
Creating clarity prepares you.
We often drift through the day arriving in each new situation exactly as we happen to be at that moment. The stress from the morning leaks into the afternoon. One difficult interaction affects the next. We carry the baggage from one moment straight into another without even noticing we’re doing it.
Sometimes that’s fine, but often it isn’t.
Most of the time we leave it to chance.
But we don’t have to.
We can choose.
This became clear to me during my years of training in rowing.
Looking back now, some of the early years in sport feel strangely dark to me. Not because of the physical work, that was expected, but because of the weight that seemed to sit over everything.
I’d arrive at the river with a knot in my stomach.
Six hours of training lay ahead, yet my reason for doing it often felt vague.
The World Championships.
The Olympics.
To get better, fitter, faster, stronger.
All true, but none of it felt particularly real on a cold Tuesday morning in February.
The previous season had ended badly, embarrassingly so. The assumption was that this next year of training would somehow put things right.
But why would it be any different this time?
Well… it was hope.
So I trained.
I was someone who worked hard. I’d dig deep most days regardless of how I felt. I worried about letting people down. I carried the weight of expectation from others and from myself.
Every morning the pressure began again.
Some days I’d arrive full of dread and get on with it.
Other days I’d arrive happy and get on with it.
But underneath it all I realised, I had no real control over which version of me was turning up on any given day.
I always wore a smile on the outside.
Behind the smile, it was a roll of the dice.
Turn up and hope.
Years later I learnt something simple.
I could choose.
It didn’t arrive through some grand revelation. It was more a gradual realisation that if I wanted to perform well in the boat, I needed to become a certain kind of athlete.
For me, that athlete was:
Positive. Calm. Relaxed.
Whenever I embodied those three qualities, things went better. Not just for me, but for the crew around me as well.
So I began a small habit.
Standing in the changing room before a session, half listening (and chuckling) to the usual nonsense chatter, I’d quietly repeat those words:
“Positive”
“Calm”
“Relaxed”
It was my way of preparing to be the person I wanted to be before stepping into the boat.
Of course, it didn’t always work.
Life doesn’t always work like that, we’re human, not robots. Things happen, moods shift, and sometimes the plan falls apart completely.
But something interesting began to happen.
By entering situations with the clear intention to act a certain way, I gave myself the chance to actually do it. Often a chance is all we need
Over time the habit grew.
Gradually I became more consistent.
Some days I leaned more on calm.
Some days positivity carried me.
Other days I dropped the ball entirely.
But slowly, the version of me that turned up became less random.
By the time the big races came around, I was no longer relying on chance.
I had built a simple habit, a quiet, private act of preparation that helped me become the athlete I wanted to be when it mattered most.
It turns out that performance doesn’t always come from doing more.
Sometimes it comes from deciding, in advance, who you intend to be.
Don’t walk into situations by accident.
Next time you step into a meeting, a conversation, a training session or even just through the front door pause for a moment…
Decide who you want to be before you arrive.
It may just be the change you need.
