I dress to suit myself, don’t always get the clients I want & I consider myself to be a perfect ten. Yes, with those so-called imperfections, I’m a perfect ten & I have always been a perfect ten – all my life!

I’m not being big-headed or pompous either. Let me explain this a bit more.

As we grow we take on board the labels & perceptions other people give us. We do this unconsciously in an effort to fit it to society & be liked. We don’t realise this as we grow & listen to well meaning advice from our parents, siblings, teachers, friends & colleagues, so we absorb their perceptions of us, then fit ourselves into that perception.

Along the way we begin to label ourselves: son/daughter, sister/brother, friend/enemy, pretty/ugly, nice/naughty, clever/stupid, the list goes on & on. As we grow we add more & more labels to the list. Then we start to define ourselves by those labels. We also rate ourselves according to how we see those labels too.

Imagine if you will that each label you give yourself is a suitcase that you pick up each morning as you get out of bed to take with you on the journeys you will make that day & you take all of them with you.

Now on a scale of one to ten, one being the lowest, ten being the highest score, rate yourself with all the labels you have taken on board. Do this honestly, cheating on this is only cheating yourself. Take note of your score. This score is the level you are playing at in life, it determines the results you get in your career, relationships & general happiness.

So if you see yourself as a busy entreprenuer with very little time for home & family life, then rate yourself as a five for family life, you can be sure your home & family life is not as good as you’d like it to be.

Most people rate themselves somewhere between five & ten, depending on their skills levels or how good they feel they do whatever it is that they do. This I call your Baggage Rate.

We tend to shave a digit off here & there when things don’t go according to plan. I didn’t do up a business plan starting out, I’ll knock a digit off, now I’m a nine. Nor did I get that funding, two digits off, so now I’m a seven. I got that contract I wanted, I’ll add on a digit, I’m back up to eight again.

This goes on & on throughout our lives adding & subtracting according the the successes & failures we achieve with the labels we define ourselves with.

So now that you know what your Baggage Rate is, park all of your suitcases into an imaginary cupboard so that all that is left is you, just you. No labels. No baggage. Just the person you are without the labels you gave yourself! What number do you rate yourself as now? Again, be honest!

For anyone who rated themselves as anything less than a ten you are doing yourself a serious dis-service because you were born a ten & have been a ten all your life!

Many people mistakenly see themselves only as the labels others gave them that they accepted. Others say that if they are a ten they have no room to grow, the very mistake I made the first time I did this.

Take a lily flower seed – it’s a perfect ten. You plant it, water it & two weeks later it starts to grow shoots. The seed is still a ten, so are the shoots & yet the seed still grew.

As humans we do too. We develop, learn & stay a ten – all our lives. Underneath all the suitcases we carry daily is the person we truly are, the rest are simply roles we play, so instead of playing at the role you rate yourself, play at ten, since that is what the real you is.

Your suitcases? – you can choose to collect them from the cupboard or leave them behind if you wish, I’m sure you haven’t missed them while reading this. You won’t miss them later either.

What ways can you see that you were defining yourself lower than your perfect ten that you are?