Honest Talk: The Demise of Inspiration & The BreakThrough

This post shares my recognition of the natural progression in a project from inspiration to stress and struggle and the insight I had that released me from the stress so I can move with more ease.

The first part describes the natural progression in a project from inspiration to the demise of inspiration. And the second part describes the insight that set me free: No thing and no one is more or less important.

This post is relevant to you if you sometimes feel struggle and stress in your work and/or life in general. More importantly, this post will be of interest to you if you too are looking for answers that go beyond finding happiness as a temporary emotion; if you are looking to find the Truth that goes beyond positive stories spun by your mind.

The Natural Progression and The Demise of Inspiration

I have been feeling some stress recently. What started out as projects I am excited and passionate about started to feel stressful. This is the natural progression for my inspired project, which I am sure many of you identify will with:

1) Birth of an idea: Good ideas come from strategic thinking but great ideas are inspired. And I am talking about inspired ideas here. This is an exciting time as it presents an opportunity to engage creatively. There are endless possibilities and I am in the flow.

2) Initial stages of development: This is really exciting - collecting information, connecting with people, getting positive feedback from people. This is still an idea so I collect information that can help me make this dream a reality and I connect with people who can take it forward. Finding the right people and information escalates my excitement.

3) Taking the right actions: Now I have the people and information to carry forward the project and I need to start working on the project. I start to take the necessary actions and it feels good.

4) The Ego: All the positive feedback and my own imagination of how important this project is, how this can impact many lives and the culture at large is creating the Righteous ego in me – how this project deserves to be supported.

5) Feeling invested: I begin to realize there is more work than anticipated, because the project became bigger than I anticipated initially and just because life presents the usual obstacles. What started out as an organic idea that I was passionate about is now a big investment of my time and resources. Of course I will not settle for anything but the best.

6) The burden: I have created the highest expectation from myself now. And of course I have shared my excitement with so many people, so can feel the weight of their expectations (most if not all is my imagination). The project is no longer fuelled by inspiration but my drive to make this a success, by my expectations of making this a huge success. I have so many people involved, all the promises I have made. No this is really big and I am in charge here. So this is all my responsibility.

7) The demise of inspiration: Now all the creative juices have dried up with the weight of expectations and the righteous ego. All actions feel like a struggle and causing stress. A stressed out mind is not very helpful. It picks on all the negativity in the environment and makes it the only reality you experience and hence magnify.

I am left wondering, what happened to my inspired thinking, what about my mindfulness practice, all those years spent in understanding the deeper truths, why am I encountering struggle and negative thoughts about something I know to be fun and creative. If I don’t get it after all that I have experienced in my life (and lives if you believe in that), then what hope is there for me, especially when that is my work – mindful marketing? And if I am feeling stuck in my own mindful marketing, then how can I tell people about it. I feel fake.

Persistence

One thing I do have is persistence – the persistence to understand my own mind and know my Self. Once I started to feel the stress and have thoughts of self doubt, I started to observe my mind. Not to get into the discussion of who is observing who, lets just say, I started to stay with my feelings and not resist or try to find an escape through positive thinking, which I am very good at also. But I wanted to find out the nature and origins of my thoughts so I stayed with the discomfort of these thoughts (as did my husband and am grateful to him for letting me be).

The BreakThrough…

Today morning as I was multitasking to get done with my breakfast so I can move on with other "more important" activities, I dropped the honey bottle and there was sticky mess all over the kitchen shelves and floor. I wet a cloth and started cleaning. All the stress I had been feeling came out in this moment and I gave up resisting the stress. In that moment there was a Knowing - No thing is more or less important. No one is more or less important. There is only this moment Now.

Are you thinking, how can all actions and all people be equally important? For example is cleaning dropped honey from the floor as important as lets say working on my big project to change the whole business paradigm? And my answer is YES. Because in that moment what was needed is cleaning the floor or it would attract ants and the cats would be all over it and making the whole house dirty. So what was most important in that moment is cleaning and not the project to change the world. How we decide what is important is relative to what is needed Now, in the present moment. So no job is superior or inferior. And similarly, no person or identity is more desirable than others, because we are all needed at different times in our lives.

There was an immense release in that Knowing. The burden that we carry of doing something important, of becoming someone, it all went away. We are all the same, just doing what we need to be doing, going about our lives. As long as we stay with that reality as the only reality - of doing things to take on a desirable identity, we will go through the highs and lows that go with the game. And you may choose to stay in that game as long as you like.

I have lived through enough games and am bored and tired of these games. I am choosing out - I am choosing to see beyond the games our mind plays. I am choosing to See what Is beyond these mind games. I am choosing to relax and Be in this moment fully. Any desire to be an identity is relinquished because I know it is only an illusion I am chasing. I Know that I already Am just as every One is, That...

What Next?

This doesn’t mean that I don’t do what needs to be done. On the contrary, it only means I do what needs to be done NOW without any resistance and with more ease, because now there is no pressure to become someone or something. I am at peace with what Is.

I also understand that ego continues to exist as long as we have a physical form and it will try to take over from time to time, which is its nature. I accept that as part of my Self. And the next time that happens, I will listen to what else I need to learn about my Self and learn to move with even more ease.

What does this mean for you?

We are all the same and yet we each need to find our own Truth. Surrounding ourselves with wise people and wisdom is good, but not enough, if you want to break out of the mind games and move with more ease. You will need to do the work of really living and learning for yourselves. What I know is that where this is a will there is a way – even to finding your Self.

Tools to Discover Your Digital Identity

"Once we have connected with what we have to offer in terms of our skills & passions, then there will be people out there to receive as customers - we only need to connect with them"

Personal branding is about communicating who we are and what service we can provide in very clear ways. The purpose of this post is to list tools that you can use to check if you have a strong and meaningful online presence.


My approach to authentic personal branding includes three components:

1) Self awareness: Awareness of passions, skills, and experiences that make you unique.

2) Authentic differentiation: Clarify how you can use your personal strengths to solve problems in unique ways and different from everyone else doing what you do.

3) Effective communication: Once you have the first two figured out, then you have to find ways of communicating with customers in ways that are clear and consistent.

Here is a list of tools that I have found so far that can assist in gauging how you and your customers are faring in terms of building an online identity that is visible and what you want it to be:

1) Check your self on 123People.com: It is interesting to see all the information about your past and present that is there. This site does a good job of pulling out all the information that there is about you. A few things to take note of:

• Are your pictures current?
• Are your emails current?
• Check your tag cloud and you can click on particular tags in the cloud to bring up info related to that term.
• Overall what is showing up, is it conveying a meaningful and consistent picture of who you are?

2) The Online Identity Calculator is a very cool tool, which has you go through a couple of simple steps using google search and comes up with your online identity based on volume and relevance. The four categories along the two dimensions are Digitally Distinct, Digitally Dabbing, Digitally Dissed, and Digitally Disastrous.

3) If you use Twitter, the Twitter Grader is very interesting because it tells your grade based on criteria including number of followers, following, tweets, re-tweets, and the kind of people following you. It also ranks you in your location and has cool graphs to plot your progress on Twitter.

4) And then there is Identity Web 2.0 Applications and Tools that lists 35 different websites, literally, that can be used to build your online presence. I have used a few of them like TwitDir and PeekYou. I would love to hear from you if you have used any others on the list and what do they do.

5) What I also have my clients always do, is to look up their category of service in their area to see if their names or business show up in google search. For example, if you search for "marketing consultants Amherst, MA" my company's name iAM Business Consulting shows up. The idea, as if it is not obvious, is that if your potential clients are looking for a solution that you provide and they don't know about you then they will type in the problem or service for which they want a solution, so your company should show under those search words.

I would loooooove to learn from you, if you know of any tools to evaluate and even build strong personal brands.

What is missing in current discussions on authentic personal branding?

In my recent tweeting past I have been reading so much about personal branding and there is much value in what is being said and taught in these forums. Yet, as I read some of this work, I have a strong feeling that something is missing in this discussion. The purpose of this posting is to reflect on what is missing in popular personal branding forums.

Many people have written about personal branding. The credit of spawning the personal branding movement perhaps goes to Tom Peters, who wrote in a famous article in Fast Company in 1997, “We are CEOs of our own companies: Me, Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called 'You.'" Another contributor to this stream is Catherine Kaputa, author of the famous book, “U R a Brand!” and more recently articles like, “Top 10 Ways to Use Your Female Advantage in Business.”

Two speakers that I have been following on this subject in twittersphere are Hubert Rampershad and Dan Schwabel. While there is an overlap in their message, they do have unique personal brands. I love Hubert’s emphasis on authenticity and expressing the inner genius that each of us has. Hubert teaches social media for personal branding, yet his own tweets are repeats promoting his books or his workshops and lack originality and the spark, in my opinion. On the other hand, you have to love Dan for the activity he is generating around his Blogs, videos, and engaging people with social media. Dan speaks to authenticity but his focus, in building a personal brand is slightly different from Hubert's. His definition, “Personal branding is the process of how we market ourselves to others.” speaks to his emphasis on identifying and articulating your “unique value proposition, whether professional or personal, and then leveraging it across platforms with a consistent message and image to achieve a specific goal.”

So many tweets and blog posts about personal branding – what is missing in this stream of thoughts and voices? Even though personal branding is about authentic expression of your inner genius, why is the discussion dominated by managing external expression. Even posts dedicated to expressing our “real selves” describe superficial strategies that appear to be a forced attempt at being unique and different. For example, the post, “Break Out of the Social Media Prison,” on Dan’s Personal Branding Blog, is an attempt to get people to be their “real selves.” Let’s look at the author’s suggestions to be our authentic selves:

1) “ONLY leave a comment on a blog IF you completely disagree with the author’s point of view.” So we are talking about being real, but to be “real” we need to comment only when we disagree? What if I agree and love what the person is saying – would I be more real by acknowledging my appreciation or by not commenting so I can be unique?

2) “Go through your Facebook and Twitter profiles, and un-friend/unfollow people who you are not close friends with.” The author find this very liberating and good for him. But does it mean that everyone in order to be “real” needs to follow him? No, we all go to social media sites for different reasons, to learn, to share, to grow, and we can do all that without being “intimate” with each other.

3) “Find a topic in your niche that is HOT. Find one that is very biased towards one side of the argument and write a post arguing for the other side. It doesn’t matter if you don’t agree with the other point of view, as long as your argument is well thought out, coherent, and makes people want to debate with you. You’ll not only stir up a great conversation online with your post, but you’ll drive more traffic to your blog and gain a new readership.” Notice that the purpose of the post was to bring out the “real” self in readers and we end up with suggestions to increase readership by writing a controversial post that we may not necessarily agree with as long as it is coherent.

I do not mean to pick on this one post, there are ample examples with other leading writers on the subject who I am sure are also writing with good intentions, but I am amazed at the superficiality and even obvious contradictions in these writings. For another example, please also read, “Top 10 Ways to Use Your Female Advantage in Business” by Catehrine Kaputa.

If indeed personal branding is about clear articulation and expression of our unique selves, where is the discussion about the “self”? Who are you? And how do you get to know the real you? How do you go beyond what these Blogs, your parents, society, or anyone has every told you about you? Even if your personal brand is an expression of service and compassion to the world, how do you know that is who you really are or was that also a desirable identity imposed upon you? There are many blog posts, books, and workshops on using social media and technology to create a consistent brand identity, an impressive identity, and all of these things have their place, they are important tools, but what about the “unique you” that is dying to speak but has been thwarted by all the voices of personal branding gurus telling you how to be and what to say?

I meet people everyday who have something very unique to offer not only because of the natural gifts they were born with, but also the unique life experiences that have taught them many valuable lessons. I believe each of us has something very unique to offer but very often that gets hidden under many layers of conditioning, fears, and expectations. If we jump to a well-articulated and coherent expression of our personal brand without internal reflection of who we are, will we not be depriving ourselves of living our highest potential and a truly remarkable life?

There seems to be such a focus on our external worlds and appearances within these discussions. Reaching for our goals, a constant strife to get somewhere other than where we are right now is what we are taught. While goals are important and hard work is also important, after 40 years of an amazing life, which includes an amazing family, challenges, several academic qualifications including PhD, and professional success, I am realizing what is most important is self-awareness. As I have learnt to get more in touch with who I really am and get rid of who I am not, I am finding myself more peaceful and energized. I am learning that my inner world is creating my outer world. As I gain clarity internally I am able to more clearly manifest my external reality, not by doing, of course there is doing involved, but that doing is a natural outcome of who I am. I don’t mean to get philosophical on you but am speaking from a very practical, and even scientific perspective. If you are not familiar with the work of scientists like Bruce Lipton, I encourage you to do so because they are now showing scientifically how our inner worlds are shaping our outer worlds.

Suggestions to find Self and Purpose

Well, I hope to blog more about personal branding from this perspective of authenticity and mindfulness. In the meanwhile, I would like to leave you with some suggestions and invite suggestions from you as well, with respect to the important step in personal branding about finding your self. I understand this is a journey and not a destination. That being said, here are some ideas for your journey of self discovery:

1) Ignore everything I just said and everything else you have ever read about personal branding and listen to your own self – who are you? Not who you want to be, not what you want others to see, but who you are you?

2) I offer some suggestions to tap into your inner purpose in an exercise I have written about elsewhere. You are welcome to try that. Doing all the steps in that exercise should surface themes that are important to you in your life.

3) Devote some time (I like to spend at least 30 minutes) every day to being with your self alone – use this time to connect with your self through breathing, walking mindfully, sitting in nature, or anything else that preferably doesn’t involve much doing, but just being.

4) Devote some time to doing things that you love – could be cooking, dancing, sports, etc.

5) Try to bring some new activities in your life in the form of doing something new, or reading, or traveling to new places, or even doing the same thing but more mindfully this time.

6) Join a group that is built around mindfulness or study of the self. Being in the company of people interested in the topic will open up new doors for you to view the world and your self differently.

7) Non-judgmental acceptance and loving your self – We often hide away parts of our selves that are not perceived to be desirable by some standards. Being mindful of how we feel, listening to our body, and thoughts, without judging, just observing can be a powerful teacher about our selves. Next time you feel angry or have any negative emotion, do not rush to hide it, move to a quiet place and stay with your thoughts, simply observing and see what happens when you become the observer of your own thoughts.

These are some of the things I do to find myself a little more each day so I can express myself in ways that serve my highest purpose in authentic and mindful ways. This is my first post inspired to write about the missing element in our discussions on personal branding and I am sure there will be more thoughts about this in the future...

I would also love to hear what you do to find your authentic self....