Personal Branding: Consistency is Key
Having a solid personal brand has a lot to do with knowing where you’re coming from in life.
Not what part of the country you’re from, how you were raised or where you went to college. The place “where you come from” has more to do with what you value and believe as well as your mission in life and what you wish to achieve. Really understanding those things will help you act from of a place of certainty and direction in all facets of your life.
Having a natural knack for noticing inconsistencies, I feel constantly aware of how often people contradict themselves. You’ll run a red arrow but not make an illegal U-Turn. You stress working out and eating clean, yet you smoke cigarettes every day. You attend church on a regular basis, yet you download illegally and burn copies of things you didn’t pay for. Do you see where I’m going with this? You pick and choose when to be consistent with what you claim to be your own values.
The personal brand that I am currently working to build for myself is one that follows the mantra of “be the best, healthiest and happiest you™.” As I’ve said before, to me this means that I am as green as I can possibly be, I am positively contributing to others and the world through everything that I do, I am healthy and fit both mentally and physically and I am working to live true to my mission statement.
When I made the decision that this would be my personal brand, I discovered a lot of projects and life practices that were inconsistent with the message I wished to send. This disheartened me a bit because they are things that I love… things that include a classic car that probably doesn’t get more than 15 mpg (though once it did get in the 20s on a road trip), an arts and craft project that was being made from non-recycled materials and really just creating more junk in the world, a business that simply focused on using design as a means to make money and a project dear to my heart (soon to be announced!) that I couldn’t really figure out how it fit within my mission.
I’m happy to report that I’ve since discovered ways that not only allow me to keep these things as a part of my life and my personal brand, but I am more excited about them than I was before! I want to share these in the near future as examples of what I intend to do as I grow my brand. My goal with this is to help others realize that you can keep doing what you’re doing in life while, with a few tweaks, making it consistent with being the best, healthiest and happiest person that you can possibly be.
Do you know where you’re coming from in life?
Can you admit to an area that you’re inconsistent in?
