When someone asks us to tell them about ourselves, we often start the answer by talking about our parents. Maybe we talk about our heritage. I did this just the other day. And while stories about our parents can be exciting or interesting, and while they can contribute to who we are, they don’t make us who we are.
We are made up of, not only our heritage and how our parents met, but by the experiences, we’ve had during our own lifetime. At some point, those experiences separate us from our parents, give us a different set of values than what they had, and teach us things we have in common with them but also teach us things that we no longer agree on.
So the next time someone asks you to tell them about yourself, abbreviate the part about your parents, and talk about your own interests, beliefs, and experiences so that they can get a true sense of who you genuinely are on your own.