Rebranding and Opportunity Costs

I've been approaching this rebranding idea with much enthusiasm, unfortunately today I was confronted with my first roadblock.  Well to be honest the second roadblock.  I realized my attitude and how I present my appearance  are huge parts of my brand, unfortunately I didn't realize how negatively my attitude toward the world had turned, I have grown coldly cynical, unwaveringly pessimistic and unnecessarily judgmental.  I do not consider myself a bad person but I know that these three negative traits are huge parts of my personality that need to be changed. The problem with taking stock of oneself is that it requires a level of strength for that sort of introspection. It was very easy to come up with the things that I needed to improve on, but when it came to focusing on the 10 things people like about me, I was at a loss for words.  I do not know if I can hold low self esteem accountable for the inability to create that list, or the fact that I never have really focused on the more positive aspects of my personality.  It was a difficult task to undertake, but I found that I could uncover some positive traits that will become the focus of the personal brand I am trying to create.  I will persevere though, to diminish the negative traits and focus on enriching the positive ones. 

Appearance, I had believed was my first roadblock.  I had never been someone who wholly concerned themselves with appearance.  My uniform of choice had always been jeans or khakis, a black t-shirt, a quirky shirt from lookhuman.com or a polo shirt.  It was not that I ever appeared unkempt, it was just that I never really took to heart the idea of dressing for the image I want to convey to others,  I know I need to change this, my best friend JL, reminded me "that you need to dress for the job you want not the job you have."   Similarly, it reminded me that I needed to dress to present the image that best reflects me as the individual and personal brand I want to put forward.  JL never reads this blog, I just hope my friend realizes how deeply indebted I am to her for being the voice of reason in my head when my own fails me. 

The idea of opportunity costs  was one that I started to reflect on after listening to a TED talk earlier this evening.  Opportunity cost as defined by google.com is "the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen." It is a term that utilized primarily in economics but it can be taken out of the field of economics and applied to how we approach all things in life.  Ultimately we have to ask ourselves if we do this, what do we potentially lose?  I forced myself to think about opportunity costs in relation to the trade off of continuing the path that I had heedlessly been following, treading aimlessly without any thought to pursuing my ambitions.  I realized by doing so I was living a life that-- although not meaningless, it was not fully meaningful or purposeful and it was not adding value to my life, nor did it enable me to add value to anyone else's life. Understanding this allowed me to really see what I was losing in the opportunity cost trade off, mostly my own happiness and wasting my life.

I have decided to share part of my journey of rebranding here in hopes that it assists you dear reader if you intend to rebrand yourself as well.