Have a seat.

If you’ve got a brown paper bag to breath into, a meditation app to breath along with, or one of those stress balls, have it handy. I want you to consider something. Don’t worry, I’m not going to call you a chicken, brat, weather reporter, liar, your mama, or a disgruntled two, etc. *Smirk.* This time, I want to share a new human hack with you that over here at HG, we’re playing with, causing magic around, and loving.

Wait for it: Your life is going as well as your taglines.

As your what’s? Whether it’s at work, home, the gym, in the mirror, with your family, about your body, your sex life, the dating sites, etc., you name it: every person, every relationship, every area and constituency in your life can be summed up in a one-liner. Worse than “can be” summed up in one…they already are.

You see, if you’re human, you have an opinion. Worse-r than that, if you’re human, anything you believe, you prove. @LaurenZander (Click to Tweet!)

Uh-oh, is right.

Seems, as usual, our smartness is killing us. Simply put, any area or relationship in your life where you’re currently rocking, where you’re successful, happy and proud – whether you know it (not) or not – you’ve got good taglines, from “I’m your go-to person” to “I’m great with numbers” to “I can turn shit into gold.” BUT, on the flipside, any relationship or area in your life where you’re on shaky ground, you’ve got bad one-liners, from, “I hate socializing at parties” to “my partner is a narcissist” to “my metabolism sucks,” and so on.

Truth is, we’re conjuring taglines and living into them all of the time as if they were, without question, THE truth. Unbeknownst to us (until now), our taglines could have been conjured by us back when we were eight years old OR as new as last week when you were shocked by THAT co-worker (you know the one) and made up another one-liner on, for the sake of argument, um, millennials!

Problem is, at the moment, these life-coloring taglines are not only being unconsciously perpetuated by us, they’re informing what we think, what comes out of our mouths, and what actions we take or don’t take.

Here’s another way to look at the level at which our current reality’s taglines drive us:

Imagine that each of our taglines are correlated to the speed we’re driving through life. If we have a great tagline in an area, we’ll go fast. For example, if you have a tagline at work for yourself like, “I’m a genius,” well, away you go, things will move quickly and epically, right? But in any area where you’ve got crap one liners, you’ll go slowly. In other words, if we’re not currently and consciously gaming our taglines, it’s like driving our “cars” in neutral, cruise control, or even worse…reverse.

Until now, that is. That’s right. Pull over.

Allow me to put my blinker on and go first with a few of my own old, solidly mediocre, taglines and the new ones I invented to replace them with (coming to an assignment near you):

My teen daughter:

• Old tagline: It’s all turning out…eventually.
• New tagline:  She’s magic. Her destiny is epic.

My 82 year old dad:

• Old tagline: Pushing to stay as long as possible.
• New tagline: 110, baby!

My coaches:

• Old tagline: Cute puppies.
• New tagline: My leaders and sacred people.

My Clients:

• Old tagline: I rock them.
• New tagline: Fairy God Mama.

Can you see how some of my old tags, “fine” as they were, were not going to prove my world, my people, my future (or theirs) EPIC? And, if I’ve been doing this work on myself for over twenty years and my one liners were only good-ish, think about what some of YOUR current taglines might be for your constituencies.

Scratch that.  Don’t think about it. List it.

Make a list of the most important people in your life as well as the most important areas of your life (click here: for helpsies). Next to each person and area, list your current taglines. Some of them, I promise, aren’t so nice! It’s okay. Remember: we’re not the nicest of species, we just play one on TV…sometimes.

Then, you’re going to write a new tagline for each person and area of your life. One that would inspire you AND have the person, relationship, or area wildly shift, where the new evidence you’ll now be garnering to prove your tagline true will epically rock both your and their worlds. Ready?

Tag you’re it.

Love,

Lauren

P.S. What’s your life like? Sucky? Sexy? Somewhere in between? Take the Current Reality Quiz! It’s a quick, easy, and fun (we swear) way to self-assess and get a better idea (or at least an honest one) on what areas of your life you need to work on.

Lauren Handel Zander is the Co-Founder and Chairwoman of Handel Group^®, an international corporate consulting and life coaching company. Her coaching methodology, The Handel Method®, is taught in over 35 universities and institutes of learning around the world, including MIT, Stanford Graduate School of Business, NYU, and the New York City Public School System. Lauren is also the author of Maybe It’s You: Cut the Crap, Face Your Fears, Love Your Life (Published by Hachette Book Group, April 2017), a no-nonsense, practical manual that helps readers figure out not just what they want out of life, but how to actually get there. She has spent over 20 years coaching thousands of private and corporate clients, including executives at Vogue, BASF, and AOL. Lauren has been a featured expert in The New York Times, BBC, Forbes, Women’s Health, Dr. Oz, and Marie Claire and she is a regular contributor to Businessweek and the Huffington Post. Click here to schedule a 30-minute consultation with Handel Group.

Image courtesy of frank mckenna.