Being ‘authentic’ is not just a nice idea, but something that has a massive effect on your health, mental state and even longevity.

As well as that, developing a strong sense of your own authentic brand unleashes you onto the world in a wonderful new way. That is, if you do it right.

It has been said that if you’re breathing you’re branding. In this time of social media platforms and virtual reality, it definitely helps to be clear on how to write your self into a sentence.

However, branding in this context is not referring to the traditional marketing definition, but rather a holistic personal one. This is the type of branding that includes your whole being, rather than pitching a product or service to a target audience. This is about authenticity, and as we now know ‘being free to be yourself’ is, in fact, an essential human need, without which we can experience trauma and ill health.

Being your real and true self is something we might spend our whole lives approaching. It is a worthy goal, one that perhaps is never completely achievable, nor measurable or clearly visible, but rather based on a feeling we have inside, something to be experienced.

For several years now, the idea of personal branding has been quietly developing. There are scant few courses available but Personal Branding Coaches are emerging as a valuable asset to your team of practitioners. Rather than just looking at how you market yourself, these practitioners take a more holistic approach and help you tease out your blocks helping to unlock a life in which you are free to be yourself both at work and at home. With these techniques in hand, you can learn to look ahead to the kind of life that allows you to be all of who you are without feeling fearful of exposing your true self.

Living and working from this level of authenticity allows us to thrive without holding back, connect more fully in both professional and personal relationships, and move forward without the same level of fear and vulnerability we may have experienced when we felt ashamed of parts of ourselves in the past.

These three concepts underpin the process of clarifying your personal brand.

1 — Work from your senses

With just a small amount of practice in feeling our senses and getting into our body, we can start to develop a feel for when we are not speaking our truth or acting from our whole self. This might be a small change in the timbre of our voice, a clenching of the gut or even a body language habit (like a nose scratch for example) that indicates we are getting off track. Get used to your own indicators, start to observe yourself in situations where you feel uncomfortable and start to retreat from being fully yourself. These are a good place to start considering if you would like to move past shame and fear. Yoga, martial arts, somatic therapies, trauma release exercise — these are all great practices to help you get in tune with your body and where you might be holding past tension and shame.

2 — Write or tell your story

Often we have developed blocks around parts of our own history. Done in safe and non-judgemental spaces with a trusted listener or reader, it can be helpful to tell our stories and to start to understand where and when we may have decided to hide parts of ourselves from visibility. Perhaps we had an aunt who told us our voices were too loud, so we spoke more quietly to please her. Perhaps we wore clothes that were not the ones we wanted to in order to please someone. Any of these small things may have trained us to put parts of ourselves away. When we get authentic we free these aspects of ourselves and allow ourselves to be seen as we are. This can be confronting and if you have experienced painful or traumatic things in the past could require the help of a trained therapist. Even if you’ve done therapy in the past it’s great to take a look at your story and ascertain where the key moments of ‘hiding’ were that you can tweak from your present perspective and now bring into the light.

3 — Build trust

One of the common misgivings about bringing ourselves fully into authenticity and visibility is, “But what will people think?” The best response to this differs for each individual, but a few really good answers are: we can never truly know what another person might or might not be thinking; what difference does it really make if another person thinks or doesn’t think something; and of course if another person thinks badly of us, does the world really end? Perhaps the power in this question comes from the opportunity to trust and have compassion. We must exercise our trust muscle and consider applying the same gentle compassionate light to those we do not know that we would to somebody we trust. Let’s assume that people are generally kind and will be happy to see you shining your light upon the world, and even if they are not, what does it really have to do with you anyway? From this perspective, we build trust for ourselves and for humanity in general.

With these practices and ideas, we are able to feel more whole as we approach the challenges of becoming more visible online and in our real lives. By accepting who we are at a deeper level we can step into a more public version of ourselves without trepidation. This reduces stress, anxiety and even saves us wasting our time on wellness fads or trends because we are more able to tune into what works for us, and what doesn’t. Saying no is a lot easier when we know what our ‘yes’ is.

This is what a good personal branding coach can do: empower you to live more fully in your own ‘YES’. From there, your opportunities open right up for better health, better opportunities and a lot more honest connection to yourself and to others.