Anxiety, Mindfulness and Your Personal Brand
This article talks
about how examining and redefining our personal brand can help us to
overcome existential anxiety and learn to live in better harmony with
ourselves and others.
Central to the Inner
Calm SMART programme's approach to stress and anxiety management is
the understanding of self beliefs and their role in maintaining us in
a place of dis-ease and distress. In CBT we talk about Negative
Automatic Thoughts (NATs) and the core beliefs that lie behind them.
Core beliefs are often negative but even when positive can be
unrealistic and inauthentic thus leading to disillusion when our
beliefs are out of step with our lived experience.
Starting from a place
of compassion for ourselves and others, the SMART course encourages
us to approach our core beliefs with kindness and understanding;
right or wrong, we believe what we believe about ourselves for a
reason and to overcome them we need to develop a kinder observer self
willing to build self acceptance. We learn to live in the moment and
observe our emotions and sensations without judging them and allowing
change to happen naturally. From this foundation, the course goes on
to help us look at our beliefs from a cognitive standpoint using the
concept of branding.
Branding is most
commonly associated with companies and organisations who convey their
identity to the world along with their values, products or missions.
Organisations make huge investments in money, time and resources to
develop their brands, and so central are they to their success
protect them fiercely. Think of Apple with their unmistakable logo
and technology designs, a brand that communicates uncompromising
product design and a premium price tag to many, or capitalism and
excessive profit to others; think of Google with a brand name that
has been almost universally adopted as a verb, meaning to search the
internet.
Brands are crucial to
non-commercial organisations as well. For example, Mind in the UK are
recognised as an organisation with a mission to support and advocate
for people with mental illness; or the NHS, our medical
service under the common shared ownership of every UK tax payer, or
Greenpeace and their advocacy and activism on global environmental
issues. All of the values they represent are expressed in their logos
and the list is endless. A brand can have also negative connotations.
Think how damaging the Deepwater Horizon oil spillage in the Gulf of
Mexico has been to BP, particularly in the United States.
The SMART programme
explores the use of branding, bringing the concept to our personal
space. We all brand ourselves subconsciously by the clothes we wear,
by our hairstyles, by our profession or job, or by our associations.
Now more than ever we also brand ourselves publicly on social media
on our Facebook page or Twitter feed and we attract admirers or
detractors in doing so, just as we sometimes do at home or in the
workplace
Now think of a Fireman.
What properties would you associate with that brand? The first thing
that occurs to me is that the label should be Firefighter as it
excludes women. Perhaps the brand would include:
- Brave
- Strong
- Professional
- Dependable
- ???
Exploring our personal
brand is a useful way of highlighting the mismatch between who we
want to think we should be and who we think we really are.
Another way of looking at it is that the difference between these two
viewpoints is what often results in negative self image, low self
esteem and existential anxiety. It can also be confusing for those we
are close to if we are unclear about our brand, resulting in a sense
that we are being artificial and inauthentic or that we are
unpredictable. With a clearer sense of our brand, or our identity,
we can become more comfortable in our own skin and convey a clearer
sense of who we really are which might initially be greeted
with confusion but, hopefully, eventually, greeted with respect and
admiration. The starting place for this process begins with
ourselves.
Having examined and
discovered the often hidden nature of our own individual brand, the
SMART course then goes on to help us create and grow healthier
personal brand by using visualisation and other techniques.
The SMART programme is a 6 week course
that teaches you to create a more positive relationship with
yourself. Using mindfulness, meditation and visualisation it connects
with your real-world existence where family and work responsibilities
and pressures are ever present. You will learn how anxiety is just
as much a physical as an emotional condition and how to create a more
harmonious mind-body connection. You will explore your own
relationship with anxiety and how anxiety can represent a low-level
nagging fear, or sometimes terror, which can sometimes give rise to
outbursts of anger.
Mindfulness teaches us
to enter a being mode in which we live in the present. This
does not suggest shrinking away from responsibilities or ambition but
teaches us to enjoy this moment, which makes us more effective and
can help us achieve while at the same time enjoying this
moment and this task.
We learn to be mindful by using breathing, meditation and
visualisation, but this is only the start. Can we be mindful in a
meeting or when with the family? Can we be present in this moment
time, in this place, and with these people? Can we look on ourselves
and others with compassion?
Our next SMART
programme in will start in early to mid June 2016 at the Norwich Wellbeing Centre of Friday evenings between 7 and 9pm. The course is limited
to a maximum of 12 people. The normal cost of the course is £180 but
there is a £30 discount available for early bookings.
If 6 weeks is too much to commit to, then keep you eyes out for our 1 day workshops. Details will be announced on our Facebook page nearer the time.
For more information
about our next Stress Management And Relaxation course in June or our 1 day workshops,
please visit our website:
or our Facebook page:
