Getting In Touch With Your Super Powers: 3 Branding Lessons I Learned From The Characters Of X-Men

Getting In Touch With Your Super Powers: 3 Branding Lessons I Learned From The Characters Of X-Men

The power of Personal Branding is all around us. Recently, while getting in touch with my inner child, I took a spin to my local theater to catch the last part of the X-Men trilogy, “The Last Stand.”

Although the movie itself is targeted towards teens (what was I doing there you wonder?), the message of embracing your unique gifts applies directly to the principles of personal branding.

What makes Personal Branding different from Business branding is that we’re connecting who you are with what you do in an unforgettable way. This requires that we move towards positioning your unique skills, talents, and super human traits that are unique just to you.

So how do you tap into those “special gifts” and set yourself apart in an unforgettable way from all the rest?

Let’s take a cue from the characters of X-Men:

1. Understand, really understand, that your unique and special talents, no matter how quirky, make you special not unusual. In a world filled with massive competition, the thing that helps you stand out are the talents and unique skills that no one else can deliver quite like you. Each X-Men possesses their own unique gift (a super power) from lightening speed reproduction, the ability to walk through walls, to telepathy.

What’s your super power? Go back in time, get in touch with your inner child and remember the things you were most passionate about. Did you enjoy organizing tea parties? Were you the performer of the bunch? Was your home the neighborhood favorite because you always kept everyone comfortable? Are you communicating those special talents in your business or hiding them?

2. Know that setting yourself apart takes courage. It sounds a little new agey but the truth is when we free ourselves from our own limitations, we make others uncomfortable. In the world of branding, those that are uncomfortable with your unique traits are simply not intended to work with you.

A clear and concise personal brand not only allows you to communicate your unique edge but you do so to your ideal clients. Your ideal clients are those that you “get” and that “get” you. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for?

Even in the world of Marvel comics, you find the struggle between conforming and innovating. In life, as in comics, being unforgettably distinctive and innovative wins! The question is, are you willing to take the last stand?

3. As competitive as the marketplace is today, there is more than enough room for everyone. The key is to identify your brand essence, communicate that clearly to your ideal target and watch the Law of Attraction work its magic. We’ve long experienced a shift in the economy in which traditional ways of selling are no longer effective. Although an overused adage, it’s true that we do business with people that we know like and trust and we’re making those judgments quickly, within mere seconds. Therefore, we are searching for those people that immediately relate to our needs and are in it to be of service versus sell us.

Our super human powers come disguised in many forms. Like the character Storm, you may share the incredible ability to enter any environment and make it magical – changing mood and thought. Perhaps like Wolverine, you possess that unshakable warrior-like ability to dust yourself off and regenerate no matter what the obstacle. Or, maybe you have the uncanny gift of laser-focused intuition and can read people exceptionally well like Professor X.

Whatever your gift, embrace it with courage, shout it from the roof tops and remember that like all X-Men, your super powers are what make you more than merely normal, they make you uniquely special!

2006 Copyright, Liz Pabon. All rights reserved.