How Christmas Music Can Help Motivate You to Establish Your Personal Brand

Just like Odysseus hearing the luring songs of the Sirens at sea, Christmas songs on the radio, in department stores, and just about everywhere lure you into the feeling of Christmas and holiday spirit.Just as much as your body wants to receive the songs and be cheerful for the holidays, you realize that it means you're going to have to find presents for your friends and family, your loved ones, and you're going to most likely eat and drink more than you should over the next few weeks.Even worse than all of that, Christmas means the New Year is approaching, which means a revisit to what goals you achieved, and what goals you completely missed.It's time that you come up with another plan of how to get organized for the New Year.Here are three things that you can do right now to take action in the New Year.1. Build your personal brandYou need to decide what your brand is. A new year is a great opportunity to re-evaluate what people think about you and how you share yourself on social media. It is important that you are being perceived online in a way that you want to be perceived.Think of your presence on various social media channels as elements of the modern resume. First make sure that you are on the appropriate channels for the type of brand that you want to portray. It’s more important to be on the right channels than to be on a lot of channels.Building your personal brand is really an exercise in eliminating things that are not core to the image you want to portray. As an exercise grab a stack of post it notes and hand them out to your friends asking them to write one word on each of the post it note describing your different characteristics. Leave the instructions as simple as that and ask each of your friends to fill out as many as they can.Once you get all of these posted notes back, put them up on the wall, and start to group them together. Cluster similar descriptions, then step back and look at your wall of post-it note clusters. You are looking at how the world perceives you, which is by default, your personal brand.What's empowering about this exercise is that you now have a choice to select the posted notes that you WANT to be described as. Take these post-it notes and put them in the center. Take all the other post it notes and take them off the wall. Congratulations. The post-it notes that remain on the wall are the basis of what you want your personal brand to be. Now comes the fun of figuring out how you can communicate this brand on a daily basis through the content that you create, intertwined in the conversations you have, and through the social media channels that you choose to use.2. Schedule your success by creating deadlines using Parkinson's LawIf you are looking back on the last year, and are disappointed with not reaching certain goals that you set to achieve, the answer to achieving them might be as simple as setting a deadline. There is a well-known phenomenon known as Parkinson's Law. Research and observation of the natural world has shown that you are more likely to get things done when you have a deadline associated with what you need to do.Have you ever noticed that seemingly impossibly long term papers actually get done on the date that they are due? Have you noticed that if given 10 weeks you may not do anything for the first 2-7 weeks, but at the last minute because it is due, you figure out how to get it done. The same is true for work deadlines. We often hear from our friends during the last few days before a major deadline, and they all of a sudden have the courage to tell you that they cannot go out for the beer that they normally join you for.Look at the post-it notes that are on the wall that now reveal the branding that you want to put out into the world. Come up with at least three goals that will help you to communicate your personal brand.Here are some sample goals you may want to think about setting.I will write one blog per week for the next 3 months.I will make it to the gym at least twice a week, no matter what.I will allocate 30 minutes a day to checking, updating, and replying to comments on my social media channels.I will launch my personal website within the next 3 months.It doesn't matter what your goals are, what's important is that they are associated with a timeline that has a deadline. Take larger goals and break them up into smaller chunks, and associate deadlines that are reasonable yet challenging. You will be amazed at the amount of accomplishments you will achieve simply because of Parkinson's Law and setting a deadline.3. Create original content.Today, there is so much noise online that it can be overwhelming. Regardless of the noise, one thing remains constant: good content is crucial. If you really want to establish your personal brand, then use Parkinson's Law to create deadlines, and create content that you are passionate about.You don't want to be the person that posts random status updates, announces that you're having coffee, and simply reposts other people’s articles. You want those who are following you to be engaged with what you can share with them. Simply regurgitating, retweeting, reposting, or copying other people's content may seem like a good idea but it will not get you on the right path of building a loyal following, and strengthening your brand.Content is king.It may seem like a grind at first, but it is so crucial that you are able to establish yourself above the noise with your original ideas, thoughts, and insights. If you are intimidated by creating your own content, here's an easy tip to accelerate getting things down on paper.Step 1. Take out your smartphoneStep 2. Open up your notepad, or start an emailStep 3. Select the voice recognition from your keyboard and start talking into your phoneStep 4. Email the translation to yourselfStep 5. Edit down your content that you have just created, and tweak /edit for clarity of what you are communicating.Step 6. Upload the content to a Google Doc, and share with a friend who is willing to read what you have written.This is a super simple way to get content from your brain into your phone onto your computer and eventually onto your social media channels. This is exactly what I did to write this post. I transcribed it into my phone while driving.Most people can communicate their ideas verbally; yet struggle when it comes to putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. Don't be intimidated, decide on topics that you are passionate about, that link with the personal branding you have chosen, and set realistic deadlines that hold you accountable to getting things done.Follow these simple steps and you will step into the new year with a new plan that will help you achieve more, and not have Christmas music trigger any more stress.