Power to brand YOU.

1. Have a vision for yourself. Articulate it well. The more clarity you get in this articulation – put it in writing and revisit/rework in it time and again – the easier it is to position BRAND YOU.
2. Create your ME brand-speak – how do you wish others speak about you/see you/perceive you. Check with your close friends how you are perceived – it will help you position the YOU brand powerfully.
3. Make BRAND YOU Vision boards – this is a powerful tool – vision boards that help you get to where you want – in most cases vision/imagination translates to reality. What does BRAND YOU stand for, and what are the offerings, competencies. Let all this be in your vision board. This will make sure that BRAND YOU eventually gets powerful!
4. Keep a goal book and iterate it again and again. Put your goals in present tense, and feel the sense of accomplishment, right now. These goals can be personal, professional, social and so on. Goals are not necessarily measured in money – and many a times, you would see that by accomplishing something else, money will flow in naturally.
5. Discover your natural ‘flow’. Flow is something that will use your strengths, make you be at your best always, without you feeling the heat and stress of slogging. When you do something you enjoy, ‘natural flow’ sans any effort does happen. You have to discover your flow understanding yourself well. And no one else can do it for you – off course your family, friends, colleagues can help you spot your ‘flow’ – the success of BRAND YOU depends so much on knowing your ‘flow’
6. Work on a time-bound IDP (Individual development plan). All of us are ‘work in progress’ and discover more of us as we live life fully. Drawing an ICP creates a great sense of self discipline – in figuring out where we are, and where we would want to be, on the basis of our strengths. It helps us build new qualities, which make us better BRAND YOU.
7. Image your BRAND ‘outcome’ personality – this is a time tested technique, with many authors dedicating books on how to image a better ‘BRAND YOU’. Imaging is pretty simple – visualize the BRAND YOU, and feel that you are that in this moment – behave as if you are already there – use all your energy to do this with sincerity, passion and commitment. Most of what you image turns out to reality sooner that you want.
8. Play only to your own rules – this is to say that your goals shall be by your standards, and not by comparing you with others. That never works, and added to that leads to energy leaks. Focusing on things besides YOU, you are wasting your time and energy, only to get you to a less resourceful state. Why do that? Every living minute, you must spend only in a manner that will better the BRAND YOU – it’s your life.
9. Attitude determines your altitude. There will be when things come to a naught, things don’t work as you wished – worst thing to do when such things do happen, is to move to the negative resourceful state. Blaming you, others, the environment, the recession and what not. When things do not seem to be their best, take a break from what you do. Loosen up. Relax. That state of being will throw up new features of the BRAND YOU, which you can use to promote, reposition, or even re-launch YOU. All this will happen when you carry the best of good spirits, great humor and a sense of balance. Stay alive and stay positive. Be a positive outcome addict – there is great power in being a positive outcome addict. Always wear that attitude to YOUR brand.
10. Be your own success coach – you will come across endless volumes of success literature, which no doubt will serve as tools of inspiration. And some of that mentioned by success coaches will be useful if you can practice. But there is a caveat: YOU are unique, and you alone are the author of BRAND YOU. Only you will know what needs to be done, worked on, corrected, promoted better, and played down in the YOU product. So, use all the coaching tools that you can lay hands on: You are the powerful river, and you know your strengths. Decide how to course through the highs and lows, with the objective of getting to your own magical ocean of accomplishment and satisfaction.
11. Play to the best of your strengths: It’s now become fad for coaches to suggest, work on your weaknesses. That would be to squander away opportunities of a lifetime, only to brood on a couple of qualities which are in us. And there is enough research to show that in most occasions, you don’t fully overcome some weaknesses. So, why waste useful energy, time and resources on weaknesses – instead, it would be a great thing to work and hone your strengths, see what best use the strengths can be put to use to create our own victories in life.
12. The power of discipline and persistence: If there are 2 great qualities that will make the difference between what you could have been and what you are – it’s discipline and persistence. Great careers in any walk of life have been brought to a halt, killed in infancy by the lack of discipline and persistence. Bear that in mind, and you certainly will be unstoppable in your course. They say discipline comes by repeating right acts for a month, on which habits are formed. As for persistence, it’s just that you refuse to be put down, come what may, until you reach your highest potential.
13. Replace your ‘no no’ habits – this is a follow through of being disciplined. The only challenge to discipline is we doing things that are no no – things that neither gives us short term happiness, and long term benefits/satisfaction. Work to throw any habit that will answer in the negative for these 2 questions. This done, you will be so quick in erasing all your no-no habits. (The best example is being worried. Pose these 2 questions, and you’ll see how ridiculous it’s to be worried – being worried is the least resourceful state for any human being, who has been gifted the joy of Life)
14. Get the Action habit – Action is the only antidote to a non-resourceful state. Just try this – when you feel a bit down, whatever silly the reason is – just set in motion yourself – jog, walk, climb a staircase, or just step into the coffee shop next door. You will see that your non-resourceful state vanishes. That’s why we are all taught never to be idle.
15. Be infectiously enthusiastic and incorrigibly optimistic – this is a must. Enthusiasm and optimism will score the highest, amongst qualities of a great player of life. In a sense, enthusiasm happens so naturally, when you are in your flow. Do something that is not natural to you, and your enthusiasm wanes and dwindles. There is another way of looking at this. The moment you begin enjoy doing some of the inevitable chores of life – which all of us, any case, must do – then enthusiasm sets in. Enthusiasm is also, all about being in the present, and enjoying the present – the now, and the YOU in the now. Optimism comes by always firmly believing the power of a positive outcome – a positive outcome addict, is necessarily an incorrigible optimist.
16. Pick up the best from past experiences; learn and move on, or ignore and move on. When we sit back and think how much time we spend introspecting why things did or did not happen this way or otherwise, beyond some point, we are wasting the present. Things have decisively gone behind, and that’s why it is called the past. So many of us willfully want to hang on there, with no value add to the BRAND YOU. Not to say that you should be a rock. Do look back at the past, and see what lessons can come to us. Be done with that. Possibly, if there have been some wrong steps, wisdom would mean that we do not repeat it. Period.
17. Focus on playing well, winning will be a by product – Playing well happens when you are fully in the present, engaged in your ‘flow’ and be in a positive outcome mode. With all this, playing well will happen so easily. And once you play well – with excellence by your own standards – winning by your terms is bound to happen. That’s why it is said, play your game well and winning will be a by product. That’s precisely how it should be also. Most time, when you look around, you will get a feeling that someone had it easily. It’s just that their focus is on just playing well and nothing else. Somewhere I read that ace athlete Ashwini Nachappa said exactly this when quizzed how she beat P T Usha – Ashwini never aimed to be better than P T Usha, she just wanted to better her own record, and winning happened. Truly, winning is just a by-product.
18. Stand by your own Brand – You have to be the spokesperson for the BRAND YOU, and no else can ever be. Think of that, when, even for a moment you think of blaming some external factor or some person for what you are and what you aren’t. Nothing can be comical than blaming someone. You are the owner of the BRAND YOU. All the attributes of the brand are as demonstrated by you – the place, the features, the promotion, packaging… This essentially means that the ownership of whatever happens to BRAND YOU is only YOU alone.
19. Get the right advice – all of us love getting advices, from all and sundry. The point is you know your brand best. Advice, unless it comes in from a stakeholder in the brand, or a well-wisher who thinks the brand should flourish, is of no use. All the more such advice taken from an unconnected quarter will harm the brand, more than an iota of any good it does. So, beware of who YOUR brand consultants and advisors are.
20. Core competence – be aware of your core competence. This comes in from understanding what you flow is, which you will spend a lot of time discovering as you play the game of life. And once you be aware of the core competence – call it the core values of your brand, you must keep improvising on the value offerings of the YOU brand, day in and day out. Look around brands that have thrived long times, and you will see that the value offering was improvised, price points tweaked, customized offerings made, re-positioning done almost every season or every year. BRAND YOU is no different. Sustain the value offering, reposition if need be, package well, and customize time and again.
21. Use the 10000 hour study tool to increase your circle of competence – this is a great thing to do, once your goal is to excel in your circle of competence. Spend approximately 10000 hours of reading/understanding better in the area of your competence, to make you an authority. This gives immense power to the Brand YOU. It may sound tough, but just think about the fact that the life cycle of the BRAND YOU is going to be anything like 20 to 30 years, depending on when you launch the YOU brand. The time you will spend honing competencies will shape your brand across 3 decades.
22. Never brood on your weaknesses – If you read point 11, then this is just a take away. Once you play by only your strengths, then there is hardly any energy that can be spent on thinking about your weaknesses. Nothing would have been ever accomplished in this world if some of the greatest people of our times chose to spend time brooding. They all accepted their weaknesses, and assiduously positioned/honed their strengths. You just do the same for the BRAND YOU.
23. Sell you to YOU first – This is about you being a buyer of you. Unless you are convinced that you will buy your brand for what it offers, then who else will invest in the BRAND YOU. So, sell you to you. Create that YOU sales talk/promo/30 second spot. Believe you and the world will come flocking to your brand. BRAND YOU.
24. Say no to gossip and whining – doing this is absolute energy leak for BRAND YOU. When you gossip, whine and complain, or do anything in a negative resourceful state, you are wasting time on some other brand. And what good does that do to BRAND YOU? Nothing, absolutely nothing. So forever, never even spend your precious time worrying about some other BRAND. Decide that your time will be spent only on BRAND YOU, come what may.
25. Be deaf to negativists – there are a whole lot of people who would not even remotely know what BRAND YOU stands for. Yet, they have an opinion, say that will not work, say you will fail, and what not. Keep the BRAND YOU deaf to such naysayers and energy drainers.