Not all successful people are happy. Some successful people are stressed out, miserable, angry, frustrated, depressed and lonely. They are barely able to get up in the morning. They trudge through the day. They might as well be breaking rocks on a chain gang in a 110-degree heat, with no water breaks. Their health is bad, their weight is out of control, their back hurts, their eyes hurt, their teeth hurt – basically their life hurts.
A miserable successful person has a terrible personal brand.
Whether you see them online or in life, their presence reflects their misery. They have to beat the bushes to get clients or the next big job. They have to do a lot of work at fire sale prices or less than the best wages. Their big ideas never get fulfilled. They are just working stiffs. Some own their businesses, but they still suffer everyday and they don’t know why because they cannot blame their “boss.” They are the boss! And, they’re afraid or embarrassed to say: “I hate my life.”
What is the difference between people who are happy, flying high and people who are frankly, miserable bottom feeders? More important: What is the discovery you need to make so you can love your golden goose life and not scavenge like a rodent?
The most important discovery you might make as you develop your personal brand is finding out what is your natural brain style. With that information, you know how to create or modify the way you do business, or position yourself as a candidate for the ideal job – choosing the type of work and the way of working that is genuinely fulfilling.
You want to put yourself to work in a way that suits your natural style of thinking, acting and enjoying life.
The way you naturally think and act and the way you would truly enjoy life – is the first of several fundamentals that lead to your building an authentic, winning personal brand. And, you’d want to know your brain style even if you weren’t interested in personal branding. Why?
All happy successful people are working within their natural brain styles.
There are five natural brain styles. One is undoubtedly the way your brain wants to function, even if you’ve been forced to think and act differently by someone else, like your parents, teachers or boss. You may have even bullied your own brain, forcing it into processing routines that frustrate your natural gifts, and dull the joy and mastery that comes when you truly engage in powerful and positive actions, for yourself first – and then others.
In my coaching practice, I continue to be surprised how often clients are surprised about the way their brains want to function, and how often they have lived lives of difficulty because they have been following an older sibling’s patterns, a role-model or just fallen into the grind of doing things the way other people do them.
The relief you feel when you think naturally, changes almost everything about the way you work, including what you want to do in your professional or business life – and how high your aspirations deserve to be set.
Neuroscientists believe your natural brain style is located in your brain’s pre-frontal cortex. In fact, your pre-frontal cortex is the site of all your “executive functioning.”
When your pre-frontal cortex is relieved of unnatural demands, you unleash the most precious resource you have in business and life: cognitive flexibility. That is the free flow of input and output, giving you the ability to easily solve complex problems and the perceptual edge that identifies opportunities that are really perfect for you.
Of course, when you are acting with this power and momentum in your brain– your personal brand emerges as clear, compelling, and attractive. You feel more confident and others have more confidence in you.
