Times are changing fast. Sometimes words like ‘accelerate’, ‘speed’ and ‘action’ can sound overwhelming, given that we all have our individual journeys to experience in its due time and grace.
Quite common now to see a huge swath of people entering the personal bandwagon with their viewpoints and stances. While its a good news that people are understanding the value of person-led branding over company-led branding to start with, but it is also voluminous in consumption of so much of content. Sometimes, even when we want to read a lot of things on the web, we are hard pressed for time. And, in hindsight, we realise this is the similar feeling people might get when they see your piece of achingly well-written newsletter or ebook or blog. They may have affinity for people they already know and trust – and you would look distantly able, yet not approachable as a person to them.
This is personal branding overwhelm. And, yes, it’s absolutely manageable when you see it as a collective.
In view of this growing personal brand content, let’s wear our rose glasses and approach it differently so that we feel less anxious and more present.
- Understand that time is finite, and the world only needs your most meaningful work. When you feel like ‘it’, you will know that you are optimised for efficiency. I think that’s the sign for progress of meaningful work. Here ‘it’ could be writing one blog post a week, or it could be sharing new ideas in your proposals to your dream clients, or simply adding 10 new connections with a personalised message to each to boost your network and drive more business. Just knowing what keeps you in a state of flow is a starting point to scale things from there. We can’t work incessantly on things that don’t serve our ambitions. And, we need to carve those work sprints to enable more effectiveness in the work we serve once we understand which efforts of ours yield the most amazing results. This kind of works as a working model for a given day, progressively.
- Define your cadences and stick to them. Figure out what causes you less overwhelm yet gets the best out of you. You may like to batch your days on several work areas. For example: Mon/ Tue – you’d like to start your day a bit slow until you get to the rhythm of incrementally upleveling your work efficacy by Wednesday. Say if you like listening to mind-blowing podcast (just I episode sets the tone of the week; P.S: I love listening to MindValley podcast – changes my perspective altogether!). And then mid-week kinda allows to you to get into your deep work zone (your mind tells you when it’s satisfied with the output). As Thursday/ Friday approaches, you have certain highlights that your feel resonated with your inner work beast of accomplishment (hello humans who always ‘look forward to creating [you may like to fill in the blanks])
- Go back to the word ‘mortal’ and meditate. Says Jobs ‘Your time is limited’ – and so does the universe. While it’s great to stay in the mindset of abundance, it is also important to acknowledge that we are here for a reason. Let’s just rationalise the reason and imbue it with our colours of our soul’s purpose and then create content that is true to us. When we truly listen to what we want to share, things look more settling and grounding and comforting. Our happiness set point becomes better, and we feel good from the inside. Starting point: if you aren’t a meditator, try Ziva Meditation, and if you aren’t, just simply take a deep breath and exhale from your mouth a couple of times. That way, you will feel more present and intuitive enough to know what the world needs to hear from you.
- Have an accepting playground. Inclusion flourishes when you embrace diversity in all its forms. It is truly therapeutic to understand and feel the other side. Just by bowing to new perspectives, our rose glasses suddenly adorn new colours to understand the absolute and relative truth of things. We all need someone who gracefully listens to us, our reasons of why we exist and what brings us on this playground of appreciating the intelligence in all its forms. You will develop a strong presence on the web when you appreciate new viewpoints instead of sounding condescending or critiquing without knowing what brought that person to say what they have to say. This helps us become kind and compassionate and become better storytellers as we evolve in our personal branding journeys.
- Maintain your professional boundaries. Hmm, when you don’t like taking calls after 7pm, just say it assertively. Or when you feel your client meetings take more time instead of doing the actual work for them, say it without feeling jittery or embarrassed of what your clients may feel. In fact, surprisingly, your clients will appreciate your time and would love to give your more work for the execution that you bring to the table. Better work leads to better and quality conversations. Brownie points? You save time and energy on both ends of the spectrum.
I hope you feel a bit better as your read this conclusion: Listen to what causes your overwhelm, be curious to know what caused it (read this part in a book called Indistractable by Nir Eyal), and just allow yourself to feel what your feel. You will then arrive into the new now once you address the chaos within. The best part? You will slowly feel true to yourself and more present! Isn’t that we are all fundamentally supposed to feel? Yes, your personal brand grows almost effortlessly then.
Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash
