Earlier today I was on a call with one of my coaching clients.

We were going over his assignment for the week and talking about ways that he can pull cues from his specific tribes for his clothing.

As a hobbyist sailor, he belongs to a specific tribe – but the way he described their clothing was that the sailors didn’t much care what they looked like – it was the function that mattered much more and they didn’t really think beyond that.

Now, because this is a common approach and because it’s my job to help my clients see things they’re missing, I challenged him on that and asked him a few questions.

Things like:

Does every single sailor wear the exact same clothing? How much variation is there?

Are there multiple competing brands within this space? Is one brand associated with one type of sailor and attitude? Are others more aligned with different types?

As we started diving in deeper, he quickly realized two things.

The first is that there is a TON of tribal signaling that goes on within the yacht clubs he belongs to – even if it’s all done under the guise of, “we don’t care how it looks as long as it gets the job done.”

The second is that he was already subconsciously aware of and accounting for these cues. Being very proficient on a yacht, he’s more attracted to the brands that are worn by the hardcore sailors than the weekend warriors.

And once we started to pull that association from the back of his mind into the forefront, it became much easier for him to see similar patterns and signals in the attire of men at the gym, at work, and all sorts of environments.

And now that he sees – consciously – it’s going to be so much easier and more effective for us to work through the remaining points in the system and really transform his appearance in a way that’s simultaneously better and makes him feel more like himself.

Don’t get caught in the trap of looking but not seeing. There’s more to this than you’ll pick up at first glance and, like my client, you’re likely already making decisions according to these deeper realizations – you may just not know it yet.

PS. If you’re ready to stop trying to figure all this out on your own and have me guide you through the whole process, go check out my coaching offerings and sign up for a free call with me to see if I can help you.