Accept Yourself And Others Will Follow

By Robin Roffer

Creating a personal brand is about shining a light on what’s different about you

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been self-conscience about my prominent Jewish nose.  So naturally, I protested when Mark Hanauer, a well-known LA-based photographer, made me turn sideways to shoot my profile.  The result is one of the best photos ever taken of me.

When I posted that picture on my Facebook page I asked my friends what they could love about themselves today that they had been seeing as a negative. I received an avalanche of responses. It was very affirming for me — an unexpected and superb gift.

Whether it’s Cindy Crawford’s iconic mole, David Letterman’s gapped teeth, Beyonce’s curvaceous booty, or the fact that Barbara Walters can’t pronounce the letter “R”, having a distinctive “flaw” can be something to celebrate and turn into an important feature of your personal brand.

Creating a personal brand will turn your flaw into the thing that makes you unique

Branding is all about distinguishing yourself from your competition and the rest of the crowd.  I’m not talking about being shocking (only a performance artist like Lady Gaga can pull that off); rather, I’m talking about being unforgettable in an authentic way.  That type of presence comes from the inner knowledge that you’re okay just the way you are.

So often we are too apologetic for our shortcomings, when we should be accepting, even celebrating ourselves — warts and all. If you are hard on yourself, others will be hard on you.  If you come from a place of strength, your relationships will be strong. The truth is people can only accept you as much as you can accept yourself.  Every important relationship in your life is a reflection of how you feel about yourself.

It’s time to stop apologizing for who you are and open up to your authentic self. To do this, start by freeing yourself from the desire to conform. When we accept ourselves, others follow.

Create a personal brand and you will positively change the way you see yourself

To shine a light on what’s positively different about you, take a few minutes to answer these questions:

• Describe what is unique about you — do you look, act or think differently from others?
• Identify one big challenge you’ve had at work because you are seen as different
• Did anything positive come out of the challenge?  What did you learn about yourself?
• How can you turn what’s different about you to your advantage?

The key to developing self-acceptance is acknowledging what is in place, what is working, and having gratitude for that. It’s about turning your focus toward what you have instead of harboring a sense of scarcity and always looking at what seems to be wrong with you or what’s missing from your life. When you live with the constant feeling that you don’t have enough or that you are not enough, others will see you that way.

By having gratitude for your true nature, you can overcome any fears that stop you from seeing yourself as an extraordinary person, just as you are. I’m starting with my nose. What will you celebrate about yourself today that has felt like a flaw?  It’s time to get comfortable in your own skin — fearlessly knowing that to the degree you accept yourself, the world will accept you as well.

Now that you know what makes you unique, create a personal brand that truly reflects who you are.

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Robin Fisher Roffer is a reinvention and personal branding specialist. She is the author of Make A Name For Yourself: 8 Steps Every Woman Needs To Create A Personal Brand Strategy For Successand The Fearless Fish Out Of Water: How To Succeed When You’re The Only One Like You. She’s also CEO, Big Fish Marketing, Inc.bigfishmarketing.com

Your Journey Line: Discover What Shaped Your Beliefs and Decisions

By Andria L. Corso

A couple of months ago I wrote about one of my clients who had a break through after realizing his limiting beliefs about his job search were holding him back.  Further work with him revealed a lot about where these beliefs came from and how to change them. 

So, where do our limiting beliefs come from?  Typically they are things we heard from authority figures when we were growing up (parents, teachers, grandparents, guardians) or, societal messages that made a strong impression on us. There is a great exercise that I use with clients in career development workshops and in coaching sessions where individuals create a “journey line” to help them understand where their beliefs originated and how these beliefs have shaped career choices (and life choices).

To create your journey line, you want to first look back at your life and the significant events that occurred.  Often times it helps to look at your life in terms of decades and the impactful things that happened in a given decade.   Our past experiences and life’s highs and lows often shape who we are today. Identifying these things gives us insight into  our most defining and enduring values and beliefs.  Write down those events and then the prevailing belief that formed as a result of what happened.  For example, perhaps in the first decade of your life you won a big spelling bee contest after lots of hard work and practice.  Based on that, you formed a belief that persistence and hard work pay off.  Maybe in the second decade of your life you got into an Ivy League school, which reinforced the belief that persistence and hard work pay off.  One of my clients actually lost her first job after college and, based on that she formed a belief that change is constant. 

After coming up with 6-10 events and beliefs (or, perhaps there are eight events but only five beliefs, because often our beliefs are reinforced by different events), you want to have a little fun and actually draw out your journey line.  It may look like the image below, which demonstrates several peaks and valleys throughout the journey line or, it may be more of an even line with a few small bumps which indicate a few lower and higher points in your life.  There is no right or wrong - it’s just an opportunity to create a visual description of the significant events of your life. 

After drawing the line, have some fun and creatively try to illustrate, with pictures, crayons, stickers or just words, the particular event and resulting belief and how it impacted you (now is your opportunity to grab some crayons, stickers, colored pencils and anything else you can pull from the kids playroom or junk drawers).  What most people find is that, first, many of the lowest points often propel them to many of their highest points in life and second, both of these create some very strong, deep seeded beliefs which we carry with us throughout our life.  This exercise is a way to connect the dots looking backwards at your life and helps make sense of the decisions you’ve made and how certain events have created beliefs and pushed you toward other decisions and events.   By going through this exercise, you will get a clearer understanding of what some of your beliefs have been and how they have influenced both your career and life choices.  What happens next is you get to choose which of the beliefs are serving you well and which are best to leave behind as you continue your journey forward.  

Leave the limiting beliefs behind as they tend to be the ones to hold you back.  Leverage the beliefs that continue to serve you well and create new beliefs based on how you want your journey line to continue. 

Andria Corso is an award winning career and leadership development coach and Strategic HR consultant with areas of expertise in career and leadership development, talent and succession management, and executive coaching. She is currently the owner of C3-Corso Coaching & Consulting, (http://www.andriacorso.com) an Executive Coaching & HR Consulting firm that specializes in working with clients to reach their highest potential.  Andria has over 15 years of HR leadership experience insider Fortune 100 companies, including 11 years inside Lockheed Martin Corporation.  Andria specifically works with clients on career transitions, career advancement & career development so they can reach their highest potential.  She is the author of From Gatekeeper to Trusted Advisor: Success Strategies for Today’s HR Professional.