Consider This …

So, despite all tangents, I’m considering the concepts and practices of branding, in these writings over the past couple weeks.  It seems to me that when you align your brand perfectly with your passion you have achieved success. 

When the way you are perceived is the same as the way you think of yourself, you are a happy person.

Until you find that sweet equilibrium between your natural urges and the outside world, you are constantly in turmoil.  You know you’re special, but your image is average.  You have a passion for painting, but you spend all your time at work.  You are an expert bicyclist, but everyone knows you as the insurance guy.  It can configure in the other direction, as well:  you’re well respected and powerful, but you harbor an inner self hatred; you have a great job that brings valuable benefits, but an insistent whisper suggests you hit the road.

Most of us live most our lives walking this tightrope.  Few actually figure out the balance.  But all of us could work harder at it.  We know that the happier we are, the happier others are around us.  It’s the compassionate thing to work at finding your particular balance in life.

Young people and older workers who have given up ambition don’t pay much attention to branding; it’s us middle-agers, struggling to get past Seth Godin’s infamous Dip who concern ourselves with such ultimate challenges.  It’s desperation tactics by a generation that has tried everything else.  It’s the best way we can invent to find our place on this globe.

But I’d surely love to convince a few young people or hopeless workers to start considering what their brand might be.  By getting an early start, greater balance may perhaps be achieved; and, on the other hand, it is certainly better late than never.  If everyone is working on developing their brand, I believe we can build a stronger society, a culture characterized by self-knowledge and sharing. 

“Obedience works fine on the well-organized, standardized factory floor. But what happens when we start using our heads, not our hands, when our collars change from blue to white?”  So questions Seth Godin in his blog this morning.  Such an essential query for all Americans these days. 

I’m reminded of a pertinent quote from Peter Maurin of Catholic Worker fame:  “Industrialism has released the artist from the necessity of making anything useful.  Industrialism has also released the workman from making anything amusing.”  

Though we are hugely indebted to the Industialists for the technological and social advances it provided, we’re also suffering from a serious lack of personal creativity resulting from Industrialism’s ‘obedience.’   On one hand, we’re sorely lacking in self-knowledge; on the other, we lust after a ‘four-hour work week’ and believe we’re entitled to privilege without perspiration.

In my work as a virtual assistant, I’m accutely aware of this phenomenon in the many young people attempting to set up in the business without first gaining skills and experience.  Our current awareness of changing economies and our suspicion that Henry Ford’s ideas are indeed out of date can lead to an unwarranted hubris.  The individual is indeed valuable in his/her uniqueness, and capable of maximizing strengths in a lucrative way.  But the development of personal creativity is an in-depth process, not an instant one.  We have a long way to go before we regain the innovative skills of our pioneering, pre-Industrialist forebears.

When ‘obedience’ goes out of style, chaos is sure to ensue for a time, at least.  Achieving peace and productivity beyond the chaos is possible through serious, dedicated, not-always-pleasant self-investigation and development.

I attended a webcast the other day with marketing guru Seth Godin (Meatball Sundae) and other experts.  The message there, as well as in so much that I read these days, is that all the tricks of SEO are fast becoming obsolete.  Though some have managed to manipulate the internet to their purposes through technicalities, and achieved high rankings, those days are coming to an end.  Search engines aim to satisfy search results as directly as possible; sites that only peripherally pertain to keywords entered can no longer gain the upper hand.  As ever, Content is King.

The term Godin used quite a bit was “remarkable.”  If you want to succeed, you must be remarkable.  Your website, blogs, articles and other methods you use to attract attention will be of little use unless the content of your offerings is “remarkable,” unless you can manage to stand out from the crowd through your expertise.

Plus ca change …. It has ever been thus, hasn’t it?  The web, after all, does little to make us rich quick.  The onus we bear is as it ever was … we must identify and maximize our true strengths to be successful.  Rather than relieving us of the responsibility to work hard and achieve, the web actually reinforces this basic ethic.

How can we do this?  How can we be “remarkable?”  It’s a lot to ask of any individual. 

So we come round again to creativity.  In practicing creativity, we do not seek to be remarkable - rather the opposite - but the great gift of creativity is that through faithful practice, it reveals the ways in which we are remarkable.  It’s the instrument we’re given for moving beyond mere survival, beyond the mundane, beyond unquestioning servitude to the greatness we each are born to realize.