Why reinventing your personal brand won’t work for you (and what to do if you want it to)

Your personal branding evolution starts with identity. Discover blocks and rewire where necessary to evolve into the full potential of your Future Self.  

Reinventing your personal branding isn’t all about the quick wins - the new LinkedIn headline, colour palette or content strategy. It starts with identity. 

The friction begins when who you were no longer matches who you’re becoming. Old roles, outdated labels and internal decisions can quietly anchor you to a former version of yourself even as your ambition evolves. 

More than the glossy exterior updates, a powerful reinvention of your personal brand requires you to release some of the identities that once kept you safe, understood and even successful. Because they no longer serve your Future Self and their ambitions, beliefs and potential. 

On your mission to reinvent your personal brand, start by recognising the reason many professionals will struggle, and how to set yourself up for success instead. 

1. You’re hanging on to past identities

Whether it’s the title from an old role, a career you’ve long moved on from, or a network, are you hanging on to past identities that are no longer aligned to you? The ones preventing you from fulfilling all the potential you have to give your Future Self? 

Your long-time friends, former colleagues or peers see you in a certain way. They want to fit the predefined box they have created for their perception of you. When you start to do things that colour outside the square, this creates confusion for them. 

Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we ourselves have subconscious reasons for holding on to these past identities. For example, the concept of ‘secondary gain’ is a popular idea in Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and in health. It’s about the conscious or subconscious gain you derive from a behaviour (in some cases, even an illness). It’s any positive gain you might experience from even a seemingly negative experience or behaviour. I like to consider the concept in all facets of my life. If I tell myself “I’m not a speaker”, I know I gain by not having to leave my comfort zone and put myself out there. If I tell myself, “I’m terrible at tech”, I don’t have to spend time learning it. 

Rebranding yourself will mean doing some things that make you and others uncomfortable. When you stop worrying about what other people think, you unlock the real potential for your personal brand rebrand. 

2. You’ve made a limiting decision

NLP proposes limiting beliefs are actually limiting decisions. This is differentiated from the general discussion around limiting beliefs. It highlights that you decided to have the limiting belief. This was likely compounded by a past event that caused you to make the decision. 

Do you believe you could never create consistent content on social media or be a public speaker? Or, that you’ll never get that more senior role or start your own business? Why? Ask yourself, “When did I make that decision?” Pinpoint the event or events and identify proof of how you have already proved that limiting belief wrong. Before you reinvent your personal brand, make sure you’ve rewritten old narratives that have previously held you back. 

3. You aren’t fully embodying your rebrand 

It’s not enough to simply set the intention to rebrand your personal brand. You have to fully embody it. 

In The Everyday Hero Manifesto, Robin Sharma highlights some of the science behind rewiring your self-identity. 

Sharma shares a fascinating piece of social psychology research that involved eight men in their seventies. They were brought into a monastery set up that looked exactly as things would have looked 22 years earlier. Some were hunched with canes. Music, books, magazines and other artefacts helped build the time warp. 

The research was conducted by Harvard Professor Ellen Langer, now known as the ‘Mother of Positive Psychology’. 

After five days, a series of biomarkers of age were tested. In just days, the men looked younger, were physically more supple, had improved manual dexterity and had better eyesight. 

Langer concluded that stepping into their younger selves caused rewiring of perceptions and reworking of self-identities. Sharma concludes it’s a life-changing example of how re-ordering your self-identity can transform your capacity for mastery.

Your brain and body are capable of rewiring themselves. But, are you really embodying this belief? If you are aiming to reinvent your personal brand, how are you creating a complete picture of this person? What do they read? What are their hobbies? What music do they listen to? How do they speak? How do they care for and carry their bodies? 

For more on how to build a complete picture of your ideal self, see my earlier blog, How I Use Pinterest Boards to Rewire My Brain and Upgrade My Life.

4. You’re overrating your imposter syndrome and authenticity  

I know authenticity is all the buzz in personal branding. In 2023, it was even Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year. According to Merriam-Webster, it’s something we’re thinking about, writing about, aspiring to and judging more than ever. 

Yet, most professionals, business or industry leaders would agree that a view of continuous development is valuable. For example, the majority of people fear public speaking, and yet this would be an unacceptable preference for a CEO, executive or emerging leader. Introverts would probably rather work alone, yet they adapt to open offices. In so many everyday examples, we put our authentic selves aside for the sake of personal growth. 

Dr Carol Dweck and her colleagues popularised the idea of a ‘fixed mindset’ versus a ‘growth mindset’. 

Those with a fixed mindset believe their talents and skills are natural and fixed and will not change over time. And that failure is a reflection of your abilities. 

With a growth mindset, you believe talent and skill can be learned over time. It is not pre-determined. You believe in life-long learning and that your efforts determine your success. You see setbacks as temporary and invite feedback. You value challenges and are inspired, not jealous, of others. 

No one is suggesting you act deceitfully or unethically. But, simply that you do not make authenticity an excuse to not evolve. 

As Brianna Wiest says in The Pivot Year:

“You are meant to grow as new evidence and experience are presented to you, as you adapt to new ideas, solve new problems, gain new skills, hear new perspectives, and see more of the world as it really is.”

Neuroscience research in more recent years helped support the idea. It has shown how malleable the brain really is. Brain plasticity has shown how connectivity between neurons can change over time. 

So, while it might not initially feel natural or authentic, try using the power of your neural pathways to bridge the way to your future personal brand. 

As Wiest also says: 

“Losing yourself is not always a bad thing. The point is to lose some versions of yourself. The point is to let some parts of yourself disintegrate within the fire of your personal transformation.”

Inner state, outer reality

The Law of Assumptions proposes that your inner state creates your outer reality. So, instead of focusing your thoughts of being an imposter in a potentially self-fulfilling prophecy, ask yourself who you want your identity to shift into being? And, how are you fully embodying them?