Every person has an intrinsic personal brand because of personality, experience and personal development. The process for managing one’s personal brand begins with self-analysis. Mindfulness can help you examine your inner thoughts and help you manage your personal brand.
Mindfulness is attention. This attention can be directed inside ourselves as well as outside ourselves. Attention to feelings, body sensations, thoughts or emotions are examples of attention to one’s inside world.
Mindfulness is attention in the here and now. Attention to the things that are happening at this very moment. This may sound easy, but how many times is our attention completely taken somewhere else by our thoughts? Although it is hard to deny that thinking is often very handy – we can make plans and solve difficult problems – at the same time, it is often the cause of many of our problems.
Our mind easily gets lost in endless thinking (worrying and rumination). Our thoughts create emotions and feelings like fear and sadness. We lie awake at night because we worry about what might happen tomorrow. We can’t stop thinking of that mistake we made last week. In our minds, we are constantly busy with the things that need to be completed. These are only a few examples of how our minds can make life difficult. Mindfulness teaches us how to deal with these problematic thoughts by using the focus of our attention in the here and now. Mindfulness helps us create a different relationship with our thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Mindful attention means attention without judgment. Often, sensations like tension or fear are automatically labeled as “bad”, “inappropriate” or “unwanted.” When we judge a certain feeling (I experience fear, this is bad, I don’t want to feel this way) we automatically create a conflict; a conflict between the current feeling (bad) and how the feeling should be (good). Attempts to resolve this conflict, for instance by suppressing the negative feeling, require a lot of energy (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998), and paradoxically cause us to feel even worse (rebound effects; Wegner, 1994).
In my psychological romance novel, All the Other Voices, the main character, Marina, struggles with the difference between her inner thoughts (brand identity) and the image she wants others to think of her (brand image). You can read a sample chapter to see if my writing style aligns with your reading preferences. If you like what you find on these pages, chances are likely you’ll enjoy the full book.
“Paying attention to the here and now requires intention, not force.”
Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1252- 1265.
Wegner, D. M. (1994). Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological Review, 101, 34–52.
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