Personal Brand Bounce-Backs

It's been a minute since I published a new edition of my newsletter for you. Frankly, in a world driven by 24/7 digital content creation, it feels more like a millennium. The reason I ghosted you and how I mustered the courage to come back is a short story, but one with insights I hope you'll find useful as you seek to strengthen your personal brand in the days and months ahead.

Sometime around my birthday last October, I started to emotionally shut down. The weight of the world was simply too heavy to bear. No matter where I looked, people were angry. As in ALL CAPS screaming mad. Hate-speech poured out of every social platform (oh yes, even this one!) and I found myself incapable of tuning it out. In mid-November, I slid off the grid completely. I reached what my insurance friends call a full stop-loss. My heart ached and my body followed.

My empathic antennae were on full alert. Even good news felt burdensome.

I took a cue from my dog, Lolla Baby, who hides behind the pillows on my bed when she needs a time-out. I curled inward, taking refuge in a protective shell of my own design that felt safe and warm and smelled like lavender. And oh, what a lovely time-out it was! I started doing the NYT crossword puzzles again. I read fiction just for pleasure, mailed notecards just to say hello, and chatted with friends by phone the way we used to, without ring lights or zoom.

As the new year came and went I started to heal; I found myself once again feeling hopeful. I also started to feel left out. I knew for a fact that I was missing out. And I felt a little like a fraud. How dare I stand on a stage, encouraging you to vibrate at your highest possible level, if I wasn't willing to do the same? Perhaps scariest of all was this: I was becoming comfortable in the quiet shadows of anonymity.

I looked to prior personal triumphs (quitting smoking, again) as well as professional wins (finally earning the Accredited Speaker designation) for inspiration and discovered three steps I take when the road ahead seems daunting or scary:

1. Ask for support. Be it a friend to hold me accountable, a coach or course to provide instruction, or something as simple as an app on my smartphone, I do better with structure. And when we ask for support, we show the people around us that it's perfectly okay to say, "Hey, can you give me a hand?" I tried gum, hypnosis, the patch, even cold-turkey but in the end, it was a book, "The EasyWay to Stop Smoking" by Allen Carr, that did the trick.
2. Start small. Big dreams are powerful motivators but committing to taking small steps set me in motion. I started by responding to a few friends who inquired about my absence. Next, I posted a mea culpa of sorts to Facebook. Buoyed by the kind and generous way my friends responded there, I posted a note here on LinkedIn. And when the world didn't blow up, I got busy writing this edition of my newsletter.
3. Dial into the Why. Feeling I have to do this or that just adds to my sense of overwhelm. When I pause to reflect on why doing something is important to me, to the woman I want to be on this earth, then some of the barriers I've imagined begin to melt away. I reminded myself of my personal vision: To be the living proof that shifts the way people tell their story to themselves, and then to others. And of my mission: To be the possibility of unwavering self-confidence, full self-expression, and abundant love.

If I've learned anything over the years helping go-getters express and strengthen their personal brand it is this: Setbacks happen. Life happens. But bounce-backs? That's where personal brands are turned to gold.