A couple of days ago, I watched the film “Armstrong,” which shows many of the lesser-known aspects of the first man on the moon. The movie has Harrison Ford as a 1st person narrator, who speaks passages from Armstrong’s books and speeches. There was one segment in the film that got under my skin. It was a scene where Ford gives a couple of sentences from an address that Armstrong held at the National Press Club on February 22, 2000.

I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer – born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow.

Here’s what impressed me about this self-depiction of Armstrong: it’s a blend of who he is and what he does. Doing and being merge together in this description. Each statement is about what he does professionally, and it also encapsulates who he is as a person.

When most of us (me included) describe ourselves, the description is an “either or”: we either talk about what we do or who we are. A description of what I do could be “I work with tech executives who want to be great leaders.” It captures part of what I do, i.e., working with tech executives.

I can also describe who I am. It could be that “I am a consultant” or “I am a father.” This captures who I am, yet it doesn’t say much about what I do.

The beauty in Armstrong’s description is that the two blend together and become one. An example: Laplace took Newton’s laws of motion and generalized them for more applications. He transformed our understanding of mechanics, and without him, we would not have a full understanding of the movement of the planets.

Armstrong’s phrase “transformed by Laplace” is a beautiful combination of how he sees his perspective of the universe changed by Laplace and, at the same time, how he uses Laplace’s work in his professional life to get to the moon.

What does this all mean for us? It’s a challenge for us. Are we able to bring our being and our doing into congruence? Are we able to align the two and speak about them as if they are one?

When we align who we are with what we do, we are able to tap into vastly more power to shape our lives.

As soon as we do this, our actions are better grounded and it’s clearer to ourselves and to other people why we act a certain way and why we make certain decisions – it is because this is who we are.

Take the Next Step

Come up with a short statement about yourself that combines who you are and what you do.