“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails.”
~ Anon
Habits enter our life for an indefinite period of time, directing our actions and soothing the mind. Yet daily routines become history as new habits unfold into our daily rhythm.
Over the years I’ve become particularly, yet vaguely, aware of my routine habits – noticing saturation in one habit, whether dietary, physical or mental, and then realizing it had ceased, overtaken by the next enthrallment.
Is branding marketing? Does having a good logo mean you have a good brand? There are many questions aiming to clarify what exactly branding is, when you should brand and how to brand most successfully. From hearing people tell their stories, to books, to working directly with up and coming companies, I’ve learned a few tid bits that I hope will help you and your brand tremendously.
Branding may not be the first thing you see as a priority when starting out, but it’s ultra beneficial to brand before anyone even knows who you are or what you do. That said, below are a few techniques that will help you brand your company, startup or even yourself.
Best applied in the early stages of brand development, these tips will help anyone at any time.
Culture is “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations”
~ Webster’s Dictionary
Consumption is a potent silent killer. In all its forms, it slowly reels us in and lights us up, but it never satisfies. It’s the addiction that can fuel your day and fill you with fleeting motivation, skipping from one stimulus to the next until you burn out.
The question is, when do we stop consuming and start producing?
The trouble is, we consume in order to produce; therefore consumption turns into procrastination.
Seemingly difficult, a change in our mind’s eye creates a world of thriving opportunity.
“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”
~ Aristotle
The Beauty and Beast of Choice
In everything we do, from yogurt to cars to pants, from university to profession to location – we have to make difficult choices.
While it’s nice to have options, it’s stressful, difficult, and often overwhelms, leading us to skip choice and accept default. We become passive, crippled by options.
Industrial growth and market economics built a worldview assuming that more choice equals more freedom and more happiness. As the more is better cliché continues to mingle its way through society, it’s becoming evident that more is not necessarily better and certainly does not make things easy.
“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”
~ Mark Twain
Technology mingled with an age of ideas spreads knowledge like wildfire. Those eager to learn, can. And fast.
But what does a culture of answers produce? And at what pace does a mind or a society advance when there is certainty in currently purported information?
Many truths of the past have evolved into grand falsehoods, where societies wholly believed in misled facts, later to discover their falsity. Are we putting too much faith in what we believe is known today?
It is ignorance, doubt and curiosity that leapfrog innovation and produce your brightest brilliance, which advance communities, societies and the world.
“The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.”
~ Deepak Chopra
It’s no secret not all kids like vegetables, or anyone for that matter, but when, where and why did vegetables get such a bad rap? Are they really distasteful, stigmatized or is it how they’re presented?
There are varied approaches parents use to coax their kids into eating healthy, but many of the strategies backfire.
Kids choose on emotions and intricate social relational evaluations. These remain the foundation of our decision-making into our adult lives, no matter the level of rational thought.
We’re all a bit childish in this way and we can learn about our minds, our habits and ourselves by examining kids and vegetables, we can even find strategies to forward our goals and approach life with thriving novelty.
“All there, totally immersed, fascinated and absorbed in the present, in the here-now, with the matter-in-hand.”
~ Abraham Maslow about creative people
Think about the last time you were so engaged in a task time was nowhere to be noticed, where whatever you were doing consumed your mind and warped time into a nonexistent externality.
Chances are, you were engaged in a form of creativity. These states of “flow” or “time-free tasks” aren’t random phenomenon we’ve come to love and seek ways of becoming Flow-State All Stars.
Although seemingly shifty, as the mind often is, a basic understanding of hemispherical brain function matched with raised consciousness will help you find more peace in the present, lose track of time and engage fully in life more frequently.
Living with Intent 