<p>Going Deeper with Knowing and Being<br><br>The first two principles of Authentic Promotion are Know Yourself and Be Yourself. What do these high-sounding precepts have to do with promoting your practice and building a viable business? Everything.<br><br>Know Yourself<br>In order to promote yourself effectively, you must know (and be able to articulate) who you are, what you do and why you do it. Any sales person will tell you that it is essential to know your product inside and out so that you can talk about it with ease and utter familiarity. If you provide a professional service, you ARE your product, and anything you hide from yourself will get in the way of promoting your practice and building prosperity. <br><br>This is fact, not theory, and it requires ongoing rigorous self examination and self awareness. After all, if you are growing and learning (and you are doing both so long as you are breathing) your product is changing every day. <br><br>Here is an exercise to help you get at who you are and why you do what you do. <br><br>Take five minutes and invite into your awareness those aspects of your work that amaze and delight you. Jot down words and short phrases as they occur to you. Don't worry about making sense or connections. You are gathering raw material here and, believe it or not, the less sense you make at this stage the more authentically you will be able to articulate your passion and purpose later.<br><br>Choose two words that you find especially evocative. Trust yourself and go with your instincts here. There are no wrong choices. Look up each word in a dictionary and a thesaurus, faithfully copying the definitions (all of them-even those that seem not to apply) and the synonyms. To go deeper, look up the roots of your words in an etymological dictionary.<br><br>Reflect about these words, their meanings and associations, and write down what you notice. Was there a surprise is what you found? An "aha!"? A dissonance? A resonance? <br><br>Be Yourself<br>Once you know who you are, be true to it. By practicing the art of telling the simple truth about your experience and your work, you will build a powerful, personal communication style. <br><br>Being yourself in your business requires that you walk your talk and talk your walk. In other words, strive to make conscious choices about how your show up that reflect who you really are. Articulate these choices as simply, clearly and honestly as you can. <br><br>One of the most powerful ways to grow in being yourself is to ask daily, "Who am I being?" Hold this question with compassionate interest so that you can answer it honestly. Out of the willingness to notice when we are being incongruent or inauthentic comes the awareness that fosters authentic choice.<br></p><p>You have the power to do one small thing in the next five minutes to improve the quality of your life. Any one of the following (or of a gazillion other tiny actions) will do the trick. Put on a tape or CD while you work. Breathe deeply and easily three times. Stand up, raise your arms over your head, stick out your tongue and roll your eyes. Call your mother. Enjoy a glass of water. File your nails. File your papers (for just five minutes). Look out the window with curiosity. Shrug your shoulders six times. Pet your cat. Clean your glasses. Read a poem (keep a book of poetry in the bathroom!). Clean the screen on your monitor. Look around and notice what in your field of vision most delights your eyes right now. Smile.<br><br><br> </p> 2008-10-06T19:04:54Z -16.1968 431 1873 true 14 7670 authentic-promotion 2 2008-10-10T15:41:43Z 2008-10-10T15:41:43Z

Knowing yourself and being yourself are a big key to authentic promotion.

0 2009-02-24T09:46:23Z