Questions to Get Closer to Your Brand

This is a series of questions, I don’t know how many. They are the ones I ask when I help folks get closer to their brand.

When you talk to your friends, what do you talk most about?

I’ll answer first to get things started.

What do you notice about my comment?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related
The Finest Way to Introduce Your Brand or Live a Life
Branding: 5 Ways to Help You Find Out Who You Are

Branding and Relationships

We all have things we do, behaviors, that we do over and over. In many ways those behaviors define who we are. You probably know quite a few about me. I know one or two about you. On their own, most are not positive or negative. For example, the behavoir of mine below can be a strength or point of argument.

I have a behavior pattern of balancing other folks’ ideas. If my husband says, “That’s the reason X and Y don’t belong together. Bad ending for this movie,” I’m likely to say, “Have a little faith. Suspend your disbelief.” If he says, “That’s the reason X and Y will live happily ever after,” I’m likely to say, “Nah, X will get bored and leave Y within the first year.”

Testing, I’m constantly testing. Because we’re always growing, we’re always changing. We need to be aware of patterns in our lives that we know who we are and what people see. If we note our own behaviors, we can be aware of how we impact others. That’s not only a great brand strategy, it’s a great strategy for life as a decent human being. Here’s how to do that.

1. Identify your behavior patterns. Choose the strongest ones, those that resonant as self-defining. For each of those, follow step 2, if possible. Turning bad habits into good ones — by starting with a paradigm shift; then implementing a new use of that skill — is far easier than eradicating a patterned response.
2. Define and name the behavior as a strength. I call the pattern above “balancing other folks’ ideas.” That gets me thinking of the pattern as a strength. It also frames the behavior in a way that I might use it effectively — in this case, when ideas NEED balancing — and in words that can explain it. “I’m sorry. I have a habit of unconsciously trying to balance ideas in a discussion. I’ll try to check that. Please go on with what you were saying.”
3. If a behavior has no redeeming value, be lethal. Name it and define it. Make a plan to replace it with a new behavior. Find out all you can about the behavior. Return to the inventory and review this single behavior against your history, physical responses, feedback worth keeping, positive inputs, and the truth. Be honest about what happens when you get caught in the behavior in question. Make a plan to replace that behavior with a specific, new response — “When someone irritates me in that way, I will now stop; look at my hands; and breathe until I have counted all ten fingers.”

Our relationships with us — mine with me; yours with you — set the pattern for our relationships with other people. If we look to ourselves and our behaviors and find a way to see strengths, if we look at the patterns that hurt us and find a way to replace them, imagine how much more equipped we are to relate to the people we meet. We show up with built in understanding. We’re thoughtful in how we see and treat every other person we know.

Folks see that understanding and thoughtfulness when they look at us. They see that we know ourselves, that we have dealt with our strengths and our weaknesses. That makes us consistent and predictable, even when we’re spontaneous, joyful, and outrageously silly. We have room for ourselves, so it’s likely that we have room for other people as well.

An invitation seen in your actions.

Is there a finer way to introduce your brand? or live a life?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related
Branding: 5 Ways to Help You Find Out Who You Are
About that Word, Brand, that Keeps Coming Up
Finding Your Frequency in Business and in Life
See the Successful Series page Brand You Series.

Branding and Relationships

A few days ago Scot Herrick left a comment on the topic of branding.

Rarely have I seen much on what you need to do to start creating a personal brand. Or, how you go about doing it (although the four steps comes close). —Scot’s comment

Scot’s observation and other conversations have led me to re-explore the idea of branding from the perspective of the relationahips that come together when someone finds a personal brand.

5 Ways to Help You Find Out Who You Are

Our relationships with ourselves are the basis for every relationship we have. That single relationship — me with myself — defines how I see me and how I see every other person I know.

In a real way, every relationship we have is really a relationship in our minds. We decide how we think other folks feel. We decide who we believe, what we perceive, and we make those things into reality.

Scot was responding to where I said Branding is knowing who I am.

Now there’s a BIG sentence.

Who actually knows who they are? I need to explain what I meant.

At best, even the most self-actualizing people among us are only on our way to becoming who we will be. We can only know who we are for a moment at a time. Then, we change and grow a bit more.

Finding a solid brand is understanding who we are right now as well as we can. Of course, knowing ourselves is subjective and fraught with tape recordings of things we’ve learned about relationships since the day we were born. It’s tricky business at best.

How do we know, how do we find out? The only answer is to pay attention.

Here are 5 Ways to Help You Find Out Who You Are.

1. Pay attention to your history.
   Everyone has lessons we face again and again. Which are yours? Those are your weaknesses. Everyone is called on by friends to help again and again to do the same things. Those are your strengths. Everyone has moments of tragedy — look for what you learned, not for how those events hurt you. Let the pain go. Find the learning. The pain gets between you and who you really are.
2. Pay attention to your body.
   Learn the physical signs that you are acting out of emotion rather than logic. Learn the physical signs that you are acting unkind toward another human being. When you feel adrenaline, stop to breathe before you act, except when immiment physical danger is involved.
3. Pay attention to people who care about you.
   Listen when they tell you what they see. Test the information against what you know. Try it on for size and ask others who care if they agree. Get to know yourself as others see you. UPDATE: Look for generous folks who have your interests at heart and who have no other agenda of their own for you. Test their feedback by asking them and yourself how balanced what they see is, and how someone who knows you in another role might respond to what they are suggesting about you.
4. Pay attention to your inner truth — you have the intuitive detail.
   You are the sum total of everything you have ever done, ever experienced, ever dreamed or thought. Stop to reflect on what your heart says is so about you. Sometimes the voices around us are loud and the negative noises are many. In your heart you know what you are really about. We all do. Hearts speak the truth if we quiet ourselves to listen without letting other voices in.
5. Pay attention to the positive
   We already are programmed to hear and respond to the negative, because negative things can hurt. Don’t throw the positive away. It’s a valuable source.

When we know who we are, it’s one bit easier for other people to see our value and our values.

Knowing who we are is the logical start.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related
About that Word, Brand, that Keeps Coming Up
Finding Your Frequency in Business and in Life
See the Successful Series page Brand You Series.