Tamsen Garrie

Who am I?

Tim Johnson, Director of Strategy for 4Networking is my biggest inspiration.  He encourages me every day to be the best I can be and without him, I would be 50% as effective.

“Who Am I?” Guest blog by Tim Johnson, Director of Strategy, 4Networking.

We live in age of decreasing formality and decreasing deference: newsreaders and the prime minister can be seen without ties, and Prince William was even allowed to marry a commoner. 

4Networking has grown, in part, by the attractiveness of its deliberately relaxed culture, a place where you can “be yourself”.

It is great to be freed up from having to conform to the stereotypical behaviour and appearances of a “successful business person”, so that the power dressing, feigned confidence often accompanied with arrogance, and associated bullshit can be left well alone. Dropping your corporate suit of armour comes with welcome relief from the expense and effort of maintaining it and I find it much easier to get on with people without it.

But after all that welcome relief, a nagging question keeps cropping up again and again, “Who am I anyway?”.  In the old world I was defined by being the biggest cog in the biggest machine I could be, and I had to collect a whole load of possessions to prove it.  But now that I’ve left that game with all of the well-known downsides that accompany it, how am I defined?  By the clothes I wear? The friends I keep? By my role as a father?  By my role in the workplace?  By the way I think?  By my political views?  By the way I’m feeling?  By the books I read?  By the way I use my “spare” time and so on, the list is endless…

I could answer all of these questions and create an endless list of descriptions, but would that get me any closer to answering who I am?  I’ve tried this approach, many times, and I’ve found it not only to be ineffective, but to make things worse as it’s a moving picture; I think differently at different times, my political views change with the issue at hand, my once love affair with red wine and whisky are no longer and so on….

I’ve explored the wisdom of the “gurus” to be informed that I’m consciousness or awareness, and that we are “all one” and armed with this knowledge too, I find myself none the wiser.  

So as I sit and wonder once more with my snoozing Labrador beside me, I remember the last time I worked this out after much reflection… after losing my arm, my business and nearly my life after a car accident 10 years ago, that I am what I make of myself, and scarily that is largely down to me!