What to do when your values thwart change, and a footnote about how no-brand branding is already here.
Ever feel woefully self-aware and stuck all at once? I’ve been there for months, so now I’m changing some down and dirty “can’t do’s” on their heads, because I feel it’s time to move forward. And I’m doing this by welcoming my limitations and naming my values, then firing up a new set of questions that includes the mess of it.
Many of us have ideas about what we can and cannot do based on concepts around permission, capacity, and capability. And in this information age, we have limitless tools to overcome these issues including information, coaching, desire, support, and even apps and feedback systems to enhance motivation. Yet even with all this awareness, hard work, and willingness to change, I find sometimes a values conflict is the thing that stops us. At least it has me. So I’m doing something about it.
Maybe we don’t need to blast apart our limiting beliefs as much as to welcome them and take an innovative stance on the wider expanse of our values. Below are a few personal examples and how I’m re-writing my own stuck thinking in terms of acceptance, values, passion, and innovation, and focusing on creating a new way forward. My goal is change for the better, for me and my community. Holistic, gentle, mindful change. Join me with a pen and paper if you like, here goes…
Task: Come up a with fresh, empowering question for each “can’t do.”
Can’t Do #1
While I am capable of branding and marketing others’ endeavors, I can’t do my own, or I’d feel trapped by a brand-prison of my own making.
I’ve protected this mire because I value freedom and growth above money, and I also sense that branding as we’ve known it is nearing an end.1 However, this limitation has harmed my ability to share my work more widely, help folks who may need what I have to offer. Perhaps I’ve left a few traditionalists scratching their heads with questions like who are you? Mommess? EMWe Art? WTF? I don’t want to answer these questions, nor simplify the complexity of my digital work because the complexity IS part of the work. And I love exercising freedom in my personal life. I also feel defining one’s creative endeavors by elevator speech is another prison.
And who cares, anyway? People care about themselves not so much me
Sooooo…
New question: What’s a brand new way to collaborate, relate, and sustain this work that is artful and innovative in and of itself? How can I design a new, comfortable way for me to interface with my community and the public, long term?
Can’t Do #2
I’ve come to believe I have an easy come/easy go attitude with resources, and can’t accrue assets or budget my spending. This belief has been helpful in terms of a routine flow of grace, creativity, energy and generosity, but detrimental in terms of security, spaciousness, and geographic freedom, which are things my family also enjoys along with me. The subtext I’ve carried from way back is: going for broke is daring and noble. Two more values I apparently treasure.2
It’s true, I value outward flow far more than I value acquisition in nearly every area of my life. If I could give away all of the best of what I have, I would definitely feel good about myself, but I also know this is unsustainable as an adult with others dependent on me. Burnout taught me to shore up and get on with adulting. More than once. Yet acquisition has felt greedy, which in my belief system is a vice, so this has been doubly challenging to address.
Better question: How can my outward flow of energy and resources provide unexpected and natural fulfillment for myself and others? What’s a balanced way of giving and receiving that feels even better than nobility?
Action Steps for Acceptance & Fast Change by
Designing New Questions
After you’ve named one can’t belief that’s held you stuck…
- Accept your limitation, own your “can’t” as okay as is.
- Name the personal value that may conflict with changing your limitation in #1.
- Design a new question/s that supports acceptance of what is, and promotes your values3.
- Notice the results
- Rework if needed
- Branding is Dead. I feel branding is going to become a trite, easily-ignored, AI-peppered playground soon, because quick-branding for commerce is one of LLM’s most tapped tasks (by Joe Public anyway). Because of this, discerning consumers have already begun to experience an active distaste of this type of marketing for unknowns, and this aversion will likely trickle into mainstream awareness within 3-5 years.
AI will not be able to fake sovereign identity quite as well as a person can in a decentralized, truth-based communication. IMHO, the mindful mess of decentralized channels may become a desirable trademark of authenticity. Unfortunately, humans have long since grown accustomed to branding as a methodology of funneling and stimulating consumer interest – and we swim in consumerist water – so it’s embraced by everyday people as much as corporations. This will also be a part of branding’s demise: if everyone can make a tidy brand with AI, it will no longer be meaningful.
↩︎ - Ugh, I can’t defend this, but it follows from a number of my most admired family members’ cherished beliefs, oh yeah, and the Buddha too.
↩︎ - I’m not going to lie, designing questions is hard work. It is THE work of change, because the answers are nearly effortless if you design a spectacular question. If you’d like some support in thinking about some new ways to frame questions, try reading this. ↩︎
