What Do People Associate With Me?

I got the idea for this post from Alice at Mom Jeans and Jesus, who wrote a post last month titled, “what do my friends associate with me?” I thought it was a great idea ad super interesting what the people closest to you think about when they think of you. However, as I don’t have that many IRL friends to ask, I decided to do my own version of this post!

Wondering what people associate with me isn’t something I’ve ever really thought about. But once I read Alice’s post, it really did get me thinking. At the end of the day, we associate things with everyone we know, right?

When I think of my boyfriend, I think of Formula 1.

When I think of my friend Hannah, I think of kindness and warmth.

When I think of my Dad, I think of horse racing.

Like, it’s natural that we attach things, places, emotions etc. to the people in our lives. So it got me wondering what people think of when they think of me.

I started off my asking my boyfriend and my parents because I assumed they would have different answers to my online pals. Which they did. Very different.

What did my boyfriend associate with me?

Sleep. Organization. Food. Books. Squash (the drink). Sneezing. Workouts. Brands Hatch and Driving Again.

I mean. I’m not mad. I’m not. Some of these are totally fair enough. I sleep a lot. I eat a lot. I drink a lot of squash and I’m ALWAYS sneezing. Those are merely observations. Brands Hatch is somewhere Carl and I both love to go, so I like that that is on here because it’s a special place.

What did my Mum associate with me?

Books. Yoga. Formula 1. Chicken wings.

Chicken wings made me literally laugh out loud. There’s a running joke in my household about the amount of chicken wings I eat so it was only natural that they were going to crop up sometime. Books, Yoga and Formula 1 are all perfectly understandable too.

What did my Dad associate with me?

Daughter. Blogging exploits.

His words, not mine. My Dad is on a different planet, so not quite sure he was thinking about this assignment in the same way everyone else was. But I mean, fair enough. He’s not wrong. I am his daughter and blogging exploits seems accurate.

What did my online pals associate with me?

This is where it gets interesting and my ego well and truly got too big for my boots. I’m kidding. Basically… WHY IS EVERYONE SO NICE?

When I sent out the tweet asking people to tell me what they associated with me, I was well and truly expecting people to say something like dogs. Or sarcasm. Or being a bit of a bitch but she’s alright.

Before we dissect this, I just want to mention that the way I made this word cloud didn’t allow multiple words as one. For example “self care”. I tried to find a way around it but because I’m technologically incompetent I couldn’t. So some phrases are split up.

So what did people say?

Some of these I’m not surprised by at all. “Fluffy white dogs” made me laugh as did “garden offices”. I both talk about both of those quite a lot! I had “self care” and “personal growth” come up quite a bit which makes sense, as I talk about them so much on my blog.

But ultimately, the two things I really took away from this little experiment is that 1) people are really bloody nice and 2) most people associate me with my blog, the topics I write about and just generally blogging related things. Which I’m not quite sure how I feel about. Here are the top 4 most common words I had:

Blogging: Like I said, I’m not sure how I feel about this. Obviously, most of the people replying to this tweet read my blog and are people I’ve met online through blogging. Blogging connects us all by such a strong thread that it’s no surprise that this was on there so much.

After blogging for so long, it’s obviously come a bit of an identity for me. I had “blogging tips” come up, which is nice because it shows that people respect my advice. And although my career is a HUGE part of who I am, perhaps it might be time for me to try something else and branch out?

Kindness: Okay I’m REALLY thrilled that this one came up. I did a lot of work on core values whilst I was doing various life coaching programs last year and “kindness” is my top core value. It’s the thing that comes up over and over again for me. Something I always want to work on.

So it’s really lovely that people notice that. Personally, I don’t always think I come across as particularly kind. I know in my personal life I am, due to the things I do. But I worry sometimes that I have a harder exterior which doesn’t show that value beneath the skin. Apparently I was wrong!

Supportive: This is similar to above and I really like that this one came up so much. I try to be supportive; again, it’s something that I don’t always feel comes across online. But it must do. So yay!

Inspirational: This one I just can’t get my head around. I don’t think anyone ever really grasps it when someone else calls them inspirational. I certainly can’t so I can only assume anyone that said this was high at the time.

Another few which made me happy to see were “hard working”, “positivity” and “ambitious”. I know I’m hard working so it’s cool that others see that too. And I like to think I’m positive online – although I do also keep it really real as well – so it’s cool that y’all don’t look at me as some miserable bitch.

Something a little different from me today but this was certainly an interesting experiment! What do you think people would associate with you?