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Soul to Sole Authentic Branding, to Success & Beyond
Timothy Maurice Webster
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First published by Stonebridge, an imprint of Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd, in 2013 10 Orange Street Sunnyside Auckland Park 2092 South Africa +2711 628 3200 www.jacana.co.za Š Timothy Maurice Webster, 2013 All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-920292-19-5 Also available as an e-book d-PDF ISBN 978-1-920292-20-1 e-PUB ISBN 978-1-920292-21-8 mobi ISBN 978-1-920292-22-5 Cover design by publicide Cover photograph taken by Pierre van den Bosch Set in Sabon 11.5/17pt Job no. 001993 See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za
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Living Soul to Sole is a journey of living authentically. Much like seeking perfection, you may not always achieve it but it’s worth the effort. Your brand should leave a footprint inspired by the soul.
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To my grandmother‌ for fighting for your authentic voice
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Thanks to my parents and grandparents for being and doing so much in such a complex era. And to Jazz for inspiring me to do more than just work. Thabiso, thanks for going beyond the role of publisher and being a mentor and friend. Natalie, your critical and honest eye made this body of work a book. To all my media partners, thanks for giving me a platform to share these ideas on a weekly and monthly basis. To my social media friends, you challenge and engage me in a way that makes me better and your fingerprints show up throughout this work. Finally, thanks to everyone who continues to believe there’s more to life than success. With love, tmW
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About Timothy Maurice Webster Soul to Sole completes Timothy’s trilogy. In his three-part series, Timothy has explored the following: •
Thinking about YOU – How branding yourself can add value to your life
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Personovation – How to reinvent your brand
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Soul to Sole – Living an authentic brand
With a background in psychology, branding and clothing design, Timothy’s work culminated in a personal leadership model that serves as an umbrella for inspiring individuals and influencers to look at their mindset, values, image and reputation as one conversation that becomes a highly relevant and influential force. He has published two books (Personovation and Thinking about YOU) and has contributed to another (Brandovation). www.timothymaurice.com
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Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Authenticity Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Seeing your Brand through your Soul’s Eyes: Branding yourself from the Inside Out and Why the Soul Must Come First . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 The Authenticity Gap: Bridging the Soul and Sole . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 A Well-styled Soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Your Professional Soul and Sole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Resoling: Reinventing your Brand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 The Soul Wants to Take the Sole Further: Increasing the Influence of the Soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 In the End, Love and Loving Authentically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143 References and Suggested Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 xiii
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Introduction
Introduction
Soul to Sole Explained
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iving Soul to Sole, an inside-out approach to living your best brand, can be poetic and flow like a river if pursued passionately. Here is a poem I wrote, highlighting the journey:
‘Your soul is seen in your walk, heard in your talk and as you swim up life’s river, your feet paddle alongside life’s currents. Many are afraid to swim, terrified of the water’s soul, but just like society, the relationship between the water and your wishes requires skill and a faith which enables you to float when necessary. Swim my dear, the river has no power except what you allow. We see your feet, splashing, one at a time, representing your soul’s desire. The river
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doesn’t care if you go fast or slow, she just flows. As your Soul and your Soles swim with the same rhythm, the river becomes hopeless as your Soul grows more hopeful. Walk, Talk, Swim or float, just enjoy life’s flow.’
This book is obsessed with a lifestyle where one pursues one’s truth. The truth is complicated because we all see life through different filters and, for each of us, our journey of authenticity and, ultimately, survival will be guided by Souls with very different life purposes. What makes these nontangible Souls so difficult to define is because the more we intellectually examine ourselves, the more elusive the Soul appears. But, what scientists such as author of How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker, have become more comfortable with as scientific enquiry has advanced is that the Soul is subjected to many forces. These forces include your social conditioning, and your genetic and instinctual impulses as well as the unknown: that mysterious domain called the unconscious. Soul to Sole is for those who care enough to make sense of these influences in order to live a life of meaning. At this stage of my work, I’m comfortable with the dance between ‘just asking questions’ and offering practical insights where necessary. You’ll notice that this book wanders between query, pragmatism and blunt ‘to do’. Where I feel experience affords me the luxury of taking on the role of expert, I’ll offer practical solutions, but where I see a need for more questions, I’ll merely set the matter on the table for probing and dialogue.
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Introduction
Soul to Sole is really about finding your own rhythm with both the known and unknown, settling in to the fact that, at best, day by day, we learn, grow and become better. One of the most difficult questions to answer is a simple one: Who are you? We spend our lives grappling with this question. When there is hope of realising the answer, our future looks bright. But when the answer eludes us, we feel enormously misplaced, often descending to what we later determine to be our worst selves. The life of someone living a Soul to Sole lifestyle, seeking a daily walk where truth and authenticity is the goal, can be lonely, but when you manage the expectations of those you care about, they’ll embrace your efforts. My life has been spent asking myself and those around me uncomfortable questions and I’ve learned that the quality of your life is determined by, first, your willingness to ask questions and, second, the quality of those questions. In my first book, Thinking about YOU, I wanted to introduce the idea of branding yourself. My second book, Personovation asked the reader to reinvent themselves when they had outgrown what they were known for. Here, the thinker, the influencer, the person who wants to leverage their brand is inspired to consider a life of truth and influence for their community, country and, ultimately, the world. Soul to Sole is about your footsteps and your Soul moving to the same beat. This book asks a fundamental question: is it possible to align the Soul with the Sole? There is a movement away from conspicuous consumerism towards a more holistic lifestyle where the pursuit of authenticity is desired. But,
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is this at all possible or should we be attempting to marry modernity, technology and a new definition of what it means to live authentically? The old definition suggests we walk barefoot, put away our phones and forgo chatting in favour of living in the spiritual moment.
Philosophers have grappled with this idea for centuries and the one thing they universally agree about is that to live an authentic life, an individual must marry their Soul’s desire to their lifestyle. However, in the journey your Soul takes into the Soles of your feet, the machine we know to be the brain must be acknowledged as both an enabler and a hurdle. The brain or the biological bridge between the Soul and Sole evolves and shifts over time. Science has now shown that we know far too little about elements of the brain, both consciously and unconsciously, to suggest any of us have full control over our authenticity. Daniel Dennet, in his book, Consciousness Explained puts forth his belief that we are a bundle of narratives that we spin, and they then spin us to and fro. I’ll argue both the Soul and the Sole have unique identities, completely separate from each other, and the key to understanding authenticity is to view them both in isolation as well as fused together. This book will investigate the history, psychology, sociological hurdles and the neuroscience of crossing this complicated bridge to authenticity. My grandmother’s story will be the glue that binds the Soul to Sole narrative.
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Introduction
A firm grasp of the following terms is critical for you to fully appreciate the Soul to Sole philosophy. Soul – The Soul in this book refers to an individual’s internal driver, or the invisible machine or essence inside that guides one towards a larger purpose. All my research suggests that the Soul is an amalgamation of the heart, the brain and the body, and revolves around your values. Beyond your brain, beyond your heart, and beyond your body’s feelings, the Soul is a higher voice that speaks and represents your internal being on behalf of all of them. Sole – At the opposite end of a person’s Soul is the physical daily result of a life lived, which this book refers to as the Sole. Your walk represents, at best, your ability to tangibly live and be as your Soul wishes, or, at worst, a failure to represent your Soul’s goals, resulting in an inauthentic life. Personal branding – The association between people and brands is, for many, uncomfortable. Turning individuals into precious commodities is not what personal branding in my work or this book is about. The discipline of branding one’s self is about representing your values, beliefs and Soul in a clear public story or narrative, one that adds value to your journey to reach your goals. Everyone is a brand. Some have more power and can use their personal brands to make themselves a lot of money, such as Beyoncé leveraging her story to do a deal with Pepsi or Tiger Woods trading in his story to do a multimillion deal with Nike. To use a less glittering example, a housewife who volunteers in her community has a brand that she trades for essential things like trust, confidence and respect, enabling her to operate efficiently in her public life.
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Personal branding is a three-tiered professional discipline: 1. Internal image: values, Soul, intellect 2. External image: dress style, overall image (hair, make-up, behaviour) 3. Perceived brand value: how your overall story is positioned in the minds of your stakeholders Authenticity – Soul to Sole redefines authenticity as a process of dedicating your heart, mind and resources as best you can to your abilities at any given moment. As moments present themselves and contexts shift, so does authenticity. Just as no human will ever live a life of total perfection, no human will ever achieve 100% authenticity, but the pursuit of authenticity is rewarding and affords you the opportunity to lay your head on your pillow in peace. Personovation – I dedicated a whole book to the concept of reinventing your brand. At many key times in your life (moving from, for example, the teen years to adulthood, from manager to director, or from being single to being married) you outgrow what you were once known for and the process of clearly identifying your values and establishing a new reputation is personovation. Essence – The history behind and story of anything – any person, place or thing – is its essence. This conditioned history an image has associated with it informs how we feel and react to it. Patients assign healing power to medicine, essentially giving the essence medical value. Doctors term this the placebo effect. The perceived essence as well as actual essence can inspire the person, place or thing to appear influential, irrespective of any actual history. 6
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Brand endowment – The next level of essence is endowment. A brand is considered endowed when its essence has economic, trade or asset value associated with it. At the end of each chapter you will find a space solely for your thoughts entitled Thinking Space. As mentioned earlier, this book is for the thinker. This space is for your own reflection and to allow you to think. I am not here to dictate what your thoughts should be, this is your journey.
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Everyone has a distance between their Soul and the Soles of their feet. I term this ‘the authenticity gap’.
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The Authenticity Question
The Authenticity Question
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he most uncomfortable question I’ve ever asked myself was: Was my grandmother authentic? Admired by the family and the community, and adored by me, there was always a nagging sense that there was an inflated persona constructed to protect her Soul. With a glorious grey mane, full of body and curled as if straight from a salon, Betty Webster, petite and sophisticated, would always make a point of prancing into public places the refined version of herself. My grandmother’s mantra was clear: look and live the part. She preached authenticity. Between raising eight kids and having a hand in raising at least eight of her grandkids, it was always clear that she was the moral authority in the family. Tom Webster, my grandfather, was full of conviction but not nearly as savvy socially. With deep affection, my
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grandfather called my grandmother Toots. Both were ardent church loyalists and performed many roles in their spiritual community. As with most grandparents, they tended to live for their family. Their lives were devoted to providing solid roots by any means necessary, refusing compromise. With grace and class, my grandmother endured tough times with a smile and perk in her step. Born a grandchild of slaves herself, it was as if she knew the only way to really make it in America was to give it all you have and put your best Soles forward. But, when I was a child watching her parade in the community, preaching her message of authenticity, lodged in the back of my mind were always these pressing questions: Was she compensating for great pain? And, if her Soul wasn’t as pure and perfect as her form, why wasn’t our family, society and the greater community more open to allowing her to live a more authentic life? Everyone has a distance between their Soul and the Soles of their feet. I term this ‘the authenticity gap’. As we face temptations and our primitive instincts encourage us to do things we don’t always understand, the pursuit of authenticity can become more confusing, causing the gap between Soul and Sole to appear daunting. A courageous few, like my grandmother, see this gap as an opportunity worthy of exploration. Living from Soul to Sole is a confluence of those two concepts, where a deeper, meaningful purpose for existing becomes the inspiration for every step you take. Once the steps you take and the motives inspired by the Soul are aligned, a formula is firmly set in place to begin building a personal reputation and brand satisfying enough to live a life of peace and influence. 12
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The Authenticity Question
This book is written for the ‘influencer’: the person who knows that somewhere – beneath the inconsistency, social change needed, fragility, frustration, frequent failures, promise of achievement, unfulfilled potential, extreme highs and lows, and the gap between reality and a dream – there lies influence and an authentic lifestyle where joy and happiness abound. Branding is the story surrounding your name or a value proposition. And the world we’ve inherited is asking for a new generation of influential people to share their story in a truthful way in order to shape the world we live in. Soul to Sole isn’t a journey of perfection: it’s a walk of truth. Steve Jobs was humanly as vulnerable as the rest of us mere mortals, but what made him one of the greatest leaders of the 21st century was deep commitment to, as he put it, being able to change the world and make a small difference. He paid ferocious attention to his personal truth in his daily walk to ensure it happened. Jobs’ life was cut short because he was unwilling to confront his own truth about his disease early enough. For all those who shape the world we live in, their brands and subsequent influence evolved naturally as a result of a commitment to exploring their personal truth. And, many times, like Jobs’, our stories are cut short because we battle with coming to terms with our authentic self. Living from Soul to Sole is a paradoxical journey – in one breath, it’s an ideal for which we all should strive; in another breath we live in a society that can’t handle the truth. This book is an acknowledgement that it requires courage, insight, observations, research and a bit of inspiration to stay the course, but, above all, one must admit to the unknown and hidden influences that come into effect along the way, and
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discover how these influences can be lessons for society as a whole. My hope is that you’ll leave this work armed with hope, knowledge of the gap, strategic direction and a bigger vision for your brand’s purpose for the world you are blessed to occupy.
Twenty-one Questions of the Soul
Why would I ask the authenticity question of my grandmother? As I’ve peered into the mirror at myself as well as worked in many countries, consulting and speaking, it has occurred to me that the majority of people in the world are miserable and, if given a chance, they would remove their masks, begin the healing process and live a life where their Soul is liberated. The family is where most of our identities form and is also the birthplace of intrapersonal conflict. It’s in the heart of the family that we are moulded into the good and bad. As kids we seek, even if unconsciously, role models in our parents and grandparents. When there are holes and gaps in their identity, they more often than not manifest in us. The vast majority of cultures throughout the world see the elderly as sacred and a no-go zone when it comes to questioning their character. This book is a tribute to a woman I love dearly, who was a product of slavery, born in the greatest depression in American history. For her to live as elegantly as she has is a testimony to her strength. However, her imperfections are witnessed in me and my entire family. It’s precisely in our
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worship of her that we fail to acknowledge our own issues. I know she’d want me to ask better questions of her and of myself. The great Mexican philosopher Miguel Angel Ruiz, wrote in his book The Four Agreements, that asking tough questions can lead to transformation, suggesting in Agreement number three that we shouldn’t make assumptions; suggesting we should rather be bold enough to ask questions and be clear about what we really desire. Ruiz believed if you are really clear, you can avoid drama and with just one agreement, you can change your life. How do we arrive at Ruiz’s agreement? For sure, this path isn’t always pleasant or convenient. Plato, a student of Socrates, famously characterised his teacher as a ‘curious questioner’. These Classical Greek philosophers both understood the power of questions. The Socratic Debate or the Socratic Method – a debate between individuals with opposing points of view – was designed to inspire critical thinking through vigorous questioning. In a complex world, where agreement is hard to come by, this art of questioning is necessary if we are to advance humanity, where leaders and ordinary citizens are equally as confused about their identity. This method of questioning eliminates contradictions by negating a hypothesis once a better opinion is found. Here are twenty-one examples of the sort of questioning I’m talking about. The themes that these touch on will be tackled in the book. Ultimately, your goal will be to interrogate and discard and produce better questions, ones that you develop a conviction strong enough to fight for.
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1. People hide behind a lie in order to protect their public identity. Is society unable to handle the truth? 2. The need to appear successful often causes people to compromise their values. When we aren’t able to own and associate with the images society prizes, should we feel vulnerable? 3. After over two hundred years of organised efforts to create unity between men and women, men’s attitudes toward women are still outdated in far too many cases. Is gender inequality an issue for politics, religion, family, or all of the above? 4. Wealthy people often travel thousands of miles to find themselves. When spirituality-seekers travel to India to find themselves in a foreign temple, does this imply that domestic temples don’t offer enough of a challenge? 5. We’re wired to judge people, places and things. So, if a lion barks or a dog roars, does the discomfort we feel speak to the fact that we do, in fact, judge a book by its cover? 6. Blondes have a lot of fun. But would women with dreadlocked hair have as much fun as their blonde sisters if Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s wives had all had dreadlocks?
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7. When a woman carries a Louis Vuitton purse people generally care if it’s real or fake. Is this because if a brand is fake, there exists the potential for the person carrying the purse to be fake too? 8. A person is a web of thoughts, love and hidden impulses. What is a person? 9. Teenagers rebel. Are the teenage rebellion years critical for self-development? 10. Race and prejudice exist in part because people believe they are different from others. Sports unite people who often have nothing in common. Does sport diffuse and suppress prejudice, allowing those from different backgrounds to accept diversity more easily? 11. Societies that value straighter hair sell more hair straightener. If your genetic make-up produces straight hair in a society that has proven to give individuals with silky hair less favour, does the tenacity of leaders with thick hair surface as a result of thick hair? And, how would this thicker haired successful person fare in a world that looked down on straight hair? 12. Societies where women have had the right to vote for more than sixty years are societies with more gender equality. In societies where women have voted for twenty-five years or fewer, can a woman expect to live authentically?
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13. Since all human beings share 99.4% of the same genes, is classification according to tools such as race necessary? Since the brain prefers labels and efficient systems in order to operate at its optimum, is race a necessary social identification tool? 14. The fundamental basis of the majority of religions is the same: to love and sacrifice for a deeper spiritual cause, such as respecting and honouring your fellow people. When religious wars arise, is this as a result of the differences between the religions or as a result of the need of the adherents to distance themselves from the similarities they see in the other faction? 15. In too many cases, young people give up on their dreams in order to pursue their parents’ ideal for their life. Is it ever noble to continue the family legacy and sacrifice your own passions? 16. Many of the greatest CEOs in technology history were university dropouts. Would Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates have been more successful if they had graduated from university? 17. The brain’s prefrontal cortex, responsible for foresight and execution, is more active in entrepreneurs. If an education system doesn’t nurture the prefrontal cortex, can we expect to live in an enterprising society?
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18. All of life’s circumstances work together to create possibility. If a child is reared in deep poverty but nevertheless grows up to be a Nobel Peace Prize winner, how is poverty valued in the pursuit of the prize, positive or negative? 19. We build our relationships around mutual memories. When a person loses their memory, isn’t it possible that they are no longer the same person, in the context of the relationship? 20. Seeds require pressure, in the form of light, food, water, wind and soil, to grow. Life offers pressure from nearly every area, but the brain prefers to operate without pressure. Is the brain’s avoidance of pressure the reason why life is so interesting? 21. Life is meaningful, but authenticity is a meaningful illusion. Would life be as meaningful if we knew everything happening in our subconscious mind? Or, is the darkness in our subconscious the reason life becomes so meaningful? And, finally, is living authentically ‘relative’ and at best, a journey in the dark?
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A youthful Soul and an old Soul are different, right? If so, is one more authentic than the other? Which one is your authentic self, the young or the elderly Soul?
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Seeing your Brand through your Soul’s Eye’s
Seeing your Brand through your Soul’s Eyes: Branding yourself from the Inside Out and Why the Soul Must Come First
Is the Soul the Same as the Self?
E
veryone I have ever met and sustained a relationship with over an extended period of time seemed to have many selves. As my grandmother aged and her control over her consciousness faded, she seemed to lose her sense of self. But, before I venture further, I must ask a question: Do you know your self? The self is elusive and often very mysterious.
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Many travel thousands of kilometres to find their selves. Scientists and spiritual gurus the world over have dedicated vast resources to this slippery quest. Lebanese–American artist and poet kahlil Gibran believed mastery of self is paramount; Gibran taught his students that you must know yourself completely, from your quiet subtleties, even down to your very atoms. History is littered with great people grappling with their ‘self’, from human rights heroines to royalty. In the Bible, king David was overwhelmed with gratitude over the majestic vastness of his divine self. In Psalm 139 he swells, ‘O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me’. In the fifteenth verse, halfway through this earnest praise, David acknowledges just how special his core is: ‘My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.’ But the way David ends the chapter bathed in humility really shows how difficult the journey can be: ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’ Why is mastering the self so difficult? What are the properties that make up the self? Is the self the Soul, or the mind, or the heart and Soul, or all combined? And, further, how much does your body impact the identity of self? Is it possible that the self is an integrated product between the mind and body that alters its identity daily? I was confronted by this perplexing question as I stared into my 80-year-old grandmother’s eyes. Alzheimer’s has erased her memory, causing her to think I was a stranger visiting to deliver food. Without her memory, is my grandmother the same woman?
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Seeing your Brand through your Soul’s Eyes
Let’s look at the self from the point of view of the body. What if you were born taller, or with straighter hair or smaller breasts? Or, what if you had appeared in the world with the same brain but as a different race? Many who lose drastic amounts of weight speak of struggling with their new self. Cognitive neuropsychologists, such as Jerry Alan Fodor, have documented several accounts where an alteration to the brain changes the very core of a person’s identity. One such case is that of Phineas Gage, a polite and affable railroad worker who was the victim of a gunpowder blast that sent an iron rod through his eye socket and parts of his frontal lobe and out of the top of his skull. Miraculously, Gage not only survived but was able to speak within a few minutes and could walk, with very little assistance at first. However, his associates noticed his personality had shifted extensively. He was now less patient and very rude, leading many close to him to say he was ‘no longer Gage’. The rod that changed his brain had changed his ‘self’. New experiences are like Gage’s rod: even in the immersion of more minor moments than Gage’s accident, we are made anew. Our self is an accumulation of many selves and, as portions of our body and mind grow or are reduced, so it is that we evolve into a new self. The fight to know the self is impaired by social intercourse. Your friends, family, colleagues and neighbours have brains that resist change and, therefore, as you evolve, they hold on to the old you. This social resistance creates a form of friction that keeps you from moving forward, causing you to deny personal growth in order to keep peace.
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Introspection, prayer and devotion to your personal evolution are required on a daily basis if you hope to keep up with and master your evolving self. The key is, as Shakespeare put it: ‘This above all: to thine own self be true’. But, this doesn’t answer the question of the relationship between the Soul and the self. Let’s peer back into our youths and see why our soulful youth is both revered and despised.
A Soul at Youth
A youthful Soul and an old Soul are different, right? If so, is one more authentic than the other? Which one is your authentic self, the young or the elderly Soul? As a society, do we place greater value on a youthful Soul and, if so, why? Since 1513, when explorer Juan Ponce de León, first governor of Puerto Rico, went searching for the fountain of youth, the world has been obsessed with the possibility of turning back the clock. Yes, we all agree, to mature is to gain. Unfortunately, in the belly of this blessed growth is loss too. The youth the world over has been responsible for some of history’s most significant milestones. The 16 June 1976 uprisings saw the youth of Soweto inspire the United Nations Security Council to pass Resolution 392, affirming the need to reinforce dignity in humankind. The younger population in America rallied to elect Barack Obama to their
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highest office, twice. The youth is responsible for everything from shifts in fashion trends to social innovations such as Facebook. Whether we admit it or not, losing youth can be quite traumatic. And, beyond that trauma, watching a grandparent lose their memory and Soul is devastating. At the time of writing this book, my grandmother could no longer recognise me. By the final stage of her dementia, I couldn’t recognise her Soul. My grandmother was born during the Great Depression, in 1929, during perhaps the worst chapter in history for a woman of colour. She was a child born into an intensely racist society where even the privileged felt hopeless. How was Toots’ Soul impacted by this depressed society? How did her memories shape who she was and how she related to her family? And when she lost the memory of those moments living in the depression due to dementia, who was she? But there are negative aspects to youth too. The unattractive side of youth appears when its wreckless, irresponsible head rears itself, reaping havoc without regard to respect. Many conservative cultures despise and denounce the mere presence of young people, discounting their ideas as unrefined rubbish. Perhaps you’ve been privy to some of this discourse: ‘What do you know? You’re just a child? Get out of here and go play’. Many spiritual leaders get their start working with the youth, the implication being that working with the youth is practice for tackling ‘real’ people. So, why is society so torn about the influence and relevance of youth? Perhaps a lesson in Biology 101 can answer this perplexing question. There are, in fact, regions of the brain
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that only mature around twenty-one to twenty-five years old. The frontal lobes, commonly referred to as the executive region of the brain, responsible for planning, strategising, organising, initiating attention and focusing, are much less developed during the teen years. Teens are, of course, capable of learning a lot, but their judgement, decision-making skills and monitoring of emotions are still developing. According to a December 2011 report by the US Department of Health and Human Services, for example, a new teenaged driver is four times more likely to be involved in a car accident than a new driver who is older. The upside of the frontal lobe’s delayed development is the genius of naïvety. If you aren’t able to fully process the implications of your decisions, you are far more likely to take risks, spark revolutions and, ultimately, you might benefit from a journey a more developed brain wouldn’t have allowed you to embark on. However you see youth, let’s remember that its majestic power comes from the very thing we’ve learned to suppress and perhaps we can rejuvenate our brands by taking the brakes off our frontal lobes, allowing for a bit more risqué behaviour. But, let’s also remember that age can provide its own purifying fountain. When character refines itself, it can add an additional beauty mark to your overall essence. Which would my grandmother see as her more beautiful self: the bright-eyed one who wooed my grandfather in a society where hatred abounded, or the slower one who inspired this book?
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Soul’s Expectations
In her song How I got Over, Mahalia Jackson calls Jerusalem the ‘homeland of the soul’ and ends the song bellowing the beginning: ‘my soul looks back in wonder, how I got over’. The song really places a lot of pressure on the Soul and even gives it a home. This begs a question. Can the pressure to succeed be so heavy that many of our dreams crumble under its weight? More and more, the weight of high expectation is causing the Soul’s desires to snap like overburdened tree limbs. When Toots sat in the first row and sang in church, you could hear in her raspy voice a pain that was far deeper than the song. With eight kids, a farm to tend to, a job in a factory and often being the mother to a couple of her grandchildren, the weight of it all came pouring through her voice. We live in a by-any-means-necessary-accumulation-of-wealth kind of world and, often, the albatross of success is thrust onto many a neck, with the grand hopes that you represent the community in such a way that your achievements bring glory to the family legacy. In all fairness, survival alone can be the major catalyst for this pressure. Many young professionals are asked to bring home the bacon to an empty fridge for not only their own children but for their siblings, parents and others’ children. In some cases, they’re even asked to build homes, pay for school fees and clothe the shirtless. And for those who have plenty of such resources, they are often asked to bring home the moral balance and restore a sense of sanity to the family.
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What do you do when your ability and skills are less than what is required to deliver? How do you communicate your fears in the face of mounting uncertainty? Do you simply jump ship and hope your limitations are never found out? These are difficult questions. Environments where a history of inequality has existed force these questions to the surface. Reengineering imbalanced demographics to achieve fair proportions of sex and race often call for people who are less skilled to be torchbearers in the race for equality. These pioneers are in many cases pushed to the frontline with extremely high expectations, leaving them open and vulnerable. As a natural defence or compensation mechanism, they proceed to deal with the pain and frustration by keeping quiet. And, in all too many cases, the result is broken hopes and dreams for all parties involved, resulting in a lose–lose dynamic. Whether it’s a social justice issue or one created by an innocent personal journey, it’s critical that you face your inability to meet expectations and, instead, stress your ability to create new expectations around your strengths. This allows you to sell and protect your value while equipping those around you with the ability to provide support. When the gap between your talent grows due to your inability to deliver, you set yourself up for sadness. My grandmother was funny. Her sarcasm would often tickle people so much that they would uncontrollably spit out their drinks. But she always seemed to hold back. My Uncle Billy Jack, her third-eldest son, was injured in a high school parade. He was playing the drums and not paying attention
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and his head was hit by a passing pole. This impaired him so dramatically he wasn’t able to live a normal, productive life. But he was also funny. When the two of them argued about life and getting a job, Toots would substitute words for what she deemed inappropriate language. Instead of ‘shit’, she’d say ‘shigards’. There were several moments when her anger at my uncle caused her to abandon the substitute word and use instead the ‘inappropriate’ form. Was the use of the socially acceptable word due to her position in the community, and which was her more authentic self: the cursing or the adorable substitute-user? If she hadn’t needed to apply such social pressure on herself to appear perfect and allowed her Soul to be more free, would she have been healthier for longer?
The Paradox of the Soul
Toots was clearly conflicted. On the one hand she was dedicated to a higher truth, but in her dedication she became gripped and bound by it. So, should we be branding ourselves or not? With so many people who see themselves as a ‘brand’ coming undone at the seams – crumbling under their brand’s weight – has personal branding become too dangerous? At some point your brand will attact a crowd and this crowd will arrive with expectations, on edge as you prepare to deliver on your promise. And it’s the dedication necessary in delivering this promise, or lack thereof, we’re now forced to interrogate.
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When I first started writing about branding yourself in early 2003, Myspace was moments from sweeping the world off its feet, Facebook was a year from inception and Twitter three years away. At the time, using social media carried little risk and possible consequences and repercussions were minimal, but now that new media has empowered the individual to simultaneously celebrate and make a fool out of themselves with one click, perhaps we should rethink the value of and our approach to personal branding. The discipline is evolving and there are dangers, such as becoming so self-centred we forget we are communal beings. The fundamental goal for inspiring people to see themselves as a brand is to create a consistent, organised framework for your personal value such that you are equipped to manoeuvre towards your goals and dreams at an optimal pace. As thought leaders, if we fail to share principles that empower individuals to live more efficiently, isn’t this a disservice to humanity? Conversely, if a person fully buys into the knowledge and implodes because they aren’t able to handle the responsibility, shouldn’t we be held accountable? Herein lies the personal branding paradox. There are two types of personal brands: domestic and commercial. Domestic personal brands are those belonging to people who have a strong reputation and image in their home and community but who don’t leverage it consciously for economic gain. Commercial personal brands are those belonging to people who thrive off using their value for the development of partnerships and alliances that lead to profit. In both instances, the potential for enhancing one’s life, as well as those in the broader community, are enormous. The
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challenge presents itself when personal branding is used recklessly, with total disregard for others and for purely selfish gain. At its core, a major benefit for branding oneself results in what I term ‘the brand placebo effect’ or ‘BPE’. A placebo, from the Latin for ‘I shall please’, is a substance that has no medicinal value given to patients without their knowing it’s not real medication. If the patient feels better, this is known as the placebo effect. Since 1955, when Henry K. Beecher wrote ‘The Powerful Placebo’, the clinical benefits have been debated heavily, but no one argues about the relationship between the social conditioning of the brain and its impact on an anticipated or expected outcome in the body. When you condition your brain and body to work synergistically towards your goals and package yourself to represent this aim, all while sharing your brand with a desired market, a reciprocal force is set in motion. You begin to believe in yourself and your stakeholders follow suit. Unfortunately, when you oversell your value to yourself, the same formula applies: you then oversell to the public, setting yourself up for failure. Whether you choose to adopt a domestic or commercial brand is not the best question. Your larger goal should be to ensure that what you’re selling to yourself and everyone else is a truth you can live with when you lay your head on your pillow.
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Is it possible that humans are wired to make a fundamental link between image/appearance and heredity/history?
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