Branding Part 2

What are your passions?

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive – Harold Whitman

As I warned you that finding your values may be the toughest part, passion may prove to be the frightening, and maybe the most fun. Before you continue, if you have not done so, go back and read Branding Introduction and Branding Part 1.

The reason I say passion may be the most frightening is because we are encouraged throughout our life to hide it. Parents may have tried to drown it out of us, corporations try to squeeze it out of us and even our friends may try to lure us away from it.

Why, you may ask? As with all things passion can be used for greatness or for other purposes. Passion can make you dangerous. If you are truly passionate about something, there is little that you will not do to achieve it.

Think now about what you are most passionate about. If you are like me, it is like the fog lifts from my mind, I get excited – the word alone inspires me to do something. However, about ten seconds later, my mind dutifully screams, no, put that away, back where it belongs.

I am making a commitment to you, and I hope you do the same thing. I am no longer going to listen to that voice. You know the one, the voice of negativity, the voice that says, you can’t do that. You don’t have the talent, strength, or ability. Whatever it is that the voice is telling you. STOP LISTENING.

We are all “wired” with something special. A gift, talent, strength or ability to achieve amazing, incredible things that we have not yet discovered we can accomplish. All you have to do is figure out what that something is. Sounds easy enough, right?

If you have read Branding Part 1, then I hope you visited Life Learning Today, and started working on your goals. If not, I would strongly encourage you to do that. You may even discover goals you didn’t know you had. I did.

 

Now that you have identified your values and goals. It is time to identify your passions. Be true to yourself through this process. It is what makes you come alive. Squelch your inner voice and possibly the voice of friends if need be. The truth is only you can find your passion.

When you find it, you will know, you will feel more alive than you have in a long time. You will begin each day with vigor, and if you truly embrace it and strive for it, virtually nothing can stop you.

Follow your passion, and success will follow you – Arthur Buddhold

My passions are:

• My Faith
• Being a Man
• Family
• Friends
• Writing
• Adventure
• Travel
• Sports
• And more!

I have my brand pretty narrowed down. I have a little more fine tuning to do. Stay tuned to find out what it is!

I hope this has been helpful for you. I am definitely not an expert in this area, however, I wanted to share my experience with you. I will list a few resources I used, I would encourage you to check out. There is a lot of good information out there.

I think this is going to be the last part of the Branding series. If you have questions for me, feel free to comment, or e-mail me.

This obviously the first time I have tried a series, if you would, please take a second and leave your thoughts in the comment section. I truly appreciate it. And, of course, bookmark or subscribe to the RSS feed and drop back in!

Resources:

Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

Achieve-IT

fastcompany.com - I didn’t really use anything from here, but it is a good article about marketing.

about.com - This is an 8 week course. I didn’t go through it, but it does look informative. I just haven’t had the time yet.