To exist in the world, we all need to decide how we show up and what we would like our impact to be. Today it’s even harder, with multiple social media streams, automated systems and AI platforms creating a new-age pressure to prove our unique value at a rate we’ve never had to before. If we don’t decide, people will and often do make their own assumptions… but to whose advantage?

How do you decide and how can you maximise your decisions to YOUR advantage whilst cultivating lasting alignment and confidence?

Enter Personal Branding!

A powerful tool to not only share our unique value to the World but also have ownership of our narrative. Whilst the concept may seem strange (seeing yourself as a brand), it’s what we do naturally do, all the time!

How many of us have that one friend who is incredibly funny ™ or know that person at work whom you can rely on to have a steady head ™ in a stressful period? Each of us communicates messages about ourselves (often unintentionally) that become our brand in different situations. When we use personal branding intentionally, however, it can be a fun and transformational tool. It can help access your unique qualities and empower you to make an impact that benefits you and your relationships.

At Aspire, we use a variety of tools to help individuals discover their brand and unique strengths. I’m currently working on my brand, as I work towards publishing a website about my acting, training, and arts-producing work. It’s been a cathartic experience which I recommend (even if you don’t hit ‘publish’). It opens you up and puts the power firmly back in your hands! Through the course of this blog, I’ll take you through the joy of personal branding. I’ll also underpin it with some exercises you can use to start your own, whether you are developing a website, presenting at work or have an event coming up!

Identifying

At some point, you gotta decide for yourself who you gonna be. Can’t let nobody make that decision for you. – Moonlight, Barry Jenkins

The movie Moonlight has a poignant scene where one of the main characters shares this quote with the movie’s young protagonist. The truth of this resonates strongly as a mantra of how we move through the world. At some stage we need to decide, otherwise, people may decide for us. Get ahead of the curve and decide for yourself. Identify your uniqueness through an exercise of free association (a psychoanalytic process). Write your name down and think of all the qualities you have and what you appreciate about yourself. Then any values you hold dear (e.g. family, knowledge). What colours do you associate with?

Try not to judge or censor yourself in this process.

Take this a step further and be more creative by thinking of items or organisms to free associate with! Imagine yourself as an animal, what would that be? Write down the qualities of that animal, how does that animal show up? Remember, there are no limits on this, you can free associate on so many things (if you were a car/organisation/celebrity which would you be and then write down what you associate with this).

By now you should have a list of qualities and attributes. Cherish it and look at all the superpowers you have!

Showing Up

You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. Just show up and begin. – Zig Ziglar

If the first step is what you have, this second step is how to use it! Here we will be making use of the list to create the impact we would like to make.

While developing my website, I aligned it with my qualities from the list. One quality that came up in my free association was ‘calm’. For me, this is a deep navy colour, so I inputted that on my website! I also wrote elegance down, so I went for fonts that presented as more elegant to me. It can then become joyous and fun as you take the exercise of leaning into things. Perhaps you want to think about the clothes you wear, the fragrances you wear, the podcasts you listen to! Remember, there is always time and room to change things on the way if it doesn’t feel right.

Lastly, you may might want to employ a technique we have at Aspire called, ‘holding a word.’ It involves holding a word of our intended impact and allowing it to naturally occur. For instance, if your goal is to be inspiring, immerse yourself in thinking ‘INSPIRE’ before a situation (e.g. a presentation or meeting) and feel the transformative effect it can have on your impact!

Maintenance and Evolution

All the worlds a stage and all the men and women merely players – William Shakespeare

The last stage is about maintaining and growing our brand. This involves consistent practice and finding your fellow players. On the surface personal branding can seem an individual exercise. However, the truth is that it’s profoundly social. When I finished my website, I sent it out to peers with whom I share values with to assess the impact of my website/brand. Feeling free enough to share it with them and feel their support was a wonderful boost and helped me maintain that which I had built.

In the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” Carnegie suggests building connections based on commonalities empowers and encourages individuals to keep a genuine identity. This could be forming bonds with peers in a training session, engaging in workplace steering groups, or connecting with groups on social media – the power of shared experiences can be an incredible catalyst for growth and enhance your credibility.

With that, I’d like to close by encouraging you to embrace your power, uniqueness and to find your people. Enjoy the process, knowing that this is your story and every good story has multiple pages to it… so get to writing!

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need a hand.

Books

Carnegie, D. (1936). “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Simon & Schuster.
Caldarone, M., & Lloyd-Williams, M. “Actions: The Actors’ Thesaurus.” Nick Hern.