Personal branding is often presented as managing your reputation: polish your image, raise your profile and find ways to make people think more highly of you.

No wonder many people feel cynical about the term, like it is all one big performance. 

The premise rests on gaining influence, status and prestige as the goal: trying to become known, trying to become accepted.

Part of the problem with image cultivation is that when we skip the necessary work of understanding our own identity, we risk continually relying on external validation to decide whether we have any value and whether what we say or do matters.

The more this is the case, the more we contort ourselves to be whoever others need us to be. 

Bit by bit, we are choosing others’ opinions over our own.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

There is an inverse approach to building the kind of reputation, standing and respect many people are after and one that is much more sustainable.

If we instead made understanding ourselves the objective, we could become more specific, nuanced and interesting in how we express ourselves.

Because no person is just one thing.

There are many sides to our character, our competencies, our history, the way we relate to others, our interests and our passions. 

When we spend time with these splendid curiosities, we can discover a richness and beauty in our own experience that feels much more natural to express.

This exploration can be challenging, but its significance lies in what follows.

It can guide us towards a clearer sense of what we want to achieve and why. 

It can also help us determine what we actually have to say.

So rather than focusing only on reputation and professional image, as most personal branding advice suggests, we could instead ask ourselves:

Who am I? What is my story?  What are the threads that have driven my choices? What different skills do I have and what perspectives do I bring that deserve further reflection?

Recognition can then flow from a place of genuine inner knowing and strength.

As Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, success “cannot be pursued; it must ensue”