Always be conscious of your image. We are rarely aware of the speed with which others label and classify us; just one glance or the crossing of a couple of words, to determine if someone we just met could be the executive we are looking for, if we are facing a charlatan or an intelligent person, although shy, if it is an individual with personality complicated or someone with difficulties to relate.
The image that others form of us, from a first impression, is what generally lasts and that which opens us or closes the doors to new opportunities.
All human beings project an image in front of others, which begins to form from our physical aspects, is strengthened with everything that we see from us and is consolidated with what others perceive and interpret each of our actions. The image that we build daily is a reflection of how others perceive us and may or may not conform to what we really are and what we have wanted others to believe and think about us.
Once the others have formed that image, we hardly have an opportunity to change it, so the first impression we achieve will usually be the one that lasts and the one that will be fundamental in the decision that is made, within any process of selection. Caring for our image over time, so that it always reflects what we wanted to show, requires a total coherence in our actions and behaviors compared to what others think and expect of us.
When that coherence is lost, even if it is only one unfortunate fact, the image deteriorates or it can become totally ruined, and its recovery is almost impossible. Keeping our image today requires extreme care because, in a society where each individual has a voice recorder in their pocket, which is both a camera and a video camera, any out-of-tune performance can be registered and uploaded in seconds. to social networks, forever ruining an image and reputation built over the years.
We live in uncomplicated times in which each one establishes his own style of dressing, often away from what the protocol and etiquette command; public figures, from the business world and especially the artistic world, attend all kinds of events and events, dressed in the most varied ways, reinforcing or deteriorating the personal image that each one has wanted to show. But the image is not just a question of ways of acting, styles of dress and ways of getting ready; the way we communicate also determines the way others see us.
Although the words we use are very important in the communicative process, because they reveal our knowledge, the degree of education and respect towards others, they are intonation and body language, the most determining aspects of the image that others form of us. The intonation, as well as the visual contact, the gestures, the handling of the hands and our corporal position, reveals the veracity of our messages, the way we feel and our degree of security or discomfort in certain situations. When we work on the creation of a certain image that we want to project, the important thing is to get it to reflect who we really are!