Category: identity

Making an IPO

I’ve invented an approach to getting a favorable outcome in the workforce. It shouldn’t upset followers that I propose this. This is because allegedly a person forms an impression of you within 7 seconds.

All along I’ve had ideas about how to dress. I’m 59. No longer do I care what others think of me. Nor do I have any interest in trying to impress people who would hate judge fear or shame me.

In my Girl on the Left blog I wrote that I think if you’re dressed chic you can get away with being a radical on the inside.

A few years ago too I thought that everyone is a work of art. We can delight the viewer. Yet even with a work of art whether the viewer likes us is subjective for each person looking at the artwork.

I’ve coined the term Making Your IPO–your Initial Persona Offering. I think every interaction you have with another person involves sales.

To get them to buy into whatever you’re selling–either you; an idea you have at work; a belief you hold–each of us should demonstrate why they should buy in and the benefit in doing this.

The second thing is to give them equity like “stock options” that are ownership in the company whose product you’re selling. A person has to want to do what you say. Again attacking your target market that you want to convert will cause those people to resist and get defensive.

The idea of making your IPO upends the idea of creating a Personal Brand. I think too that the best personal brand is a reflection of who you are and what you stand for. It’s as simple as that.

We should make our Initial Persona that we offer others our own beautiful self. Acting true to yourself is the best way to sell your own unique brand. Jazzing up our appearance is not vain or calculating. It’s a way to level up your presence. Which in the end feels good to you. Not just to the viewer.

The real thing when you’re just starting out in recovery is that the hair could be uncombed. The shoes are scuffed.

Or like I did I wore regular sized clothing when I was a Petite size. So the blazer was as big as my Grandpa’s and the sleeves were too long too.

Even with all its scandals Nike is a brand to research for understanding how it generates fierce fans of its products. Read the book which I might have reviewed in here: Emotion by Design by Greg Hoffman who worked at Nike for decades.

In the next blog entry I will talk about things I’m doing to polish my persona. It’s not bulletproof that everyone will always buy into what you’re selling. Yet like I said in that other blog dressing well helped me recover. That’s the real impact of leveraging how you look: You take joy in getting up in the morning and going out the front door.

Illness and Identity and Career

This is going to be a carnival of three related blog entries on the topic of illness and identity and career.

In conversation with a peer friend I asked him to clarify something I had been thinking about on the topic of illness and identity and career.

The friend understood: There are different pieces of ourselves. We’re not just one thing. We can talk and write about life outside of mental health.

For months now I’ve been interested in the Venn diagram intersection between illness and identity and career.

About how people choose to identify themselves to others. Some of us right off will tell people: “I’m disabled.” Some of us will say: “I have a disability.”

In my life I prefer to be identified by my name or by my personality traits or by what I’m passionate about.

This extends to labels outside of illness that people commonly use to identify themselves. Why should we have to label ourselves at all?

Years ago a workshop leader told everyone in her course: “If you name it, you can claim it.” I understand that this is the underlying dynamic in using a “hook” to describe yourself.

In work emails I would rather write after my name: Christina Bruni (Author/Advocate).

What I would ideally like to use is: Christina Bruni (Chris/Christina) to identify myself apart from a preferred personal pronoun.

It’s a matter of a person’s individual preference whether they want to talk about their illness in ordinary conversation. Or whether they choose not to disclose as a matter of course.

The choice is yours whether you disclose, how you disclose, who you tell, and when.

In the next blog entry I’ll talk about advertising yourself as a whole person instead of dwelling on symptoms and illness.