the role of self-care in your personal brand

You know how this vicious cycle goes: get stressed, fall behind, stop taking care of yourself, sleep horribly, feel icky, fall off wellness wagon, lose patience with loved ones, miss a deadline, throw a muscle in your back...etc etc...next thing you know, you're immobilized on the couch in your least-restrictive fitting yoga pants, with mac & cheese and TIVOed reruns of Law & Order SVU, and wondering when the laundry will start doing itself.

Life happens. And there's nothing we can do about it other than decide that we're going to deal with it, hopefully with positivity and with good humor. A very smart friend of mine, in retelling a story of her own last week, explained the central thinking behind her enthusiastic and upbeat - but calm and thoughtful - approach to her life: "I can't control what's going on out there. I can only decide in here (pointing at her head) how I'm going to handle it." This is a woman who, not unlike me, has experienced just about every major life stressor that can be conceived of in the past 18 months: job change, death in the family, financial upheaval, work stress, and so forth. So to me, her mantra rang true. And I know she can't possibly feel that confidence every minute of every day, but it inspired me to think more about how I can bring my own tenacity, creativity and centeredness back to the forefront.

For me, and I think my above-mentioned friend, this boils down to self-care. Yes, another phrase bandied about by every self-help, Oprah-spewing life changer out there...but bear with me. My friend prioritizes her attitude and mental decisioning as part of her own self-care. And this process serves to help her stay authentic, to live her personal brand.

Being authentic to your brand means taking care of it. Growing it, nurturing it, caring for it when it's under the weather. Redirecting it when it gets off on a tangent. In a way, thinking about attending to my brand resonates with me. It's easier for me - and I suspect many women- to drum up energy and enthusiasm to grow or care for something as opposed to "taking care of me" in some esoteric, philosophical sense. This, I can get my hands around!

It's easy to see what happens when you get out of sync but like any smart strategic plan, it's critical to identify the risk factors and figure out how to use them to course correct. Notice, I said "course correct" and not "COMPLETELY CHANGE YOUR LIFE." Because I don't know about you, but the idea of "COMPLETELY CHANGING MY LIFE" seems a tad overwhelming. Gulp.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to declare this "Unapologetic Self-Care Week" here in Trixieland. I'm going to sit down and take stock of the patterns in my life that have caused me to wander off the road and I'm going to name them. I'm going to think about how each of these recurring scoundrels affects me and what I might do to address them immediately and with proactive attention. If I have a setback with my business, how do I usually "fall apart?" What can I do to self-care my way through that setback so that "falling apart" looks like a blip on the radar and not a Richter-sized event?

I've also carved out a day to tuck myself into a retreat and let the self-care techniques and strategies wash over me. This should be fun. We'll be learning about such things as guided imagery, meditation, setting intentions, journaling, guided touch and yoga. By Thursday of my "Unapologetic Self-Care Week," I should be primed to put on my beginner's mind and see what techniques I can try in my strategic plan to care for my personal brand: me.