Thanks for commenting.

Our society happens to promote an ideology of “realizing yourself,” but on closer inspection realizing yourself turns out to entail participation in certain social projects, projects primarily related to work (career) and consumption. For the most part I am supposed to realize myself by being a big success and acquiring lots of stuff. The “personal branding” stuff is largely an ethical matter. It raises the question of more or less intentional deception in order to pursue one’s desired ends. Those of us who are critical of this are, I think, pointing out that in some sectors of the society values have shifted to such an extent that integrity and honesty are seen as impediments to success.

I look forward to reading your post. Great to hear you have gotten something out of some of mine.

I’ve been reading you blog for a while now, even quoted it on my blog a few times. It’s interesting that I find Duff commenting here as well, since he’s another fascinating individual. Anyway, I thought this would be a good time to stop lurking and comment once and for all.

What’s the difference you say? In the ideal scenario (if there’s such a thing), it means that you are yourself, but you also spend time making it public. I don’t think it goes beyond that. In the not so ideal but much more common scenario, it means creating a lie, a powerful public image that’s only destined to disappoint in real life.

I wrote a post about this that I’d like to share with you, where I also expose my negative thoughts towards personal branding: http://www.owlsparks.com/advice/to-hell-with-personal-branding/

Thanks for the always stimulating content Peter, keep it up.

Ironically, most personal branding coaches (who themselves project larger-than-life uber-cool personal brands) tend to claim that marketing yourself is all about being “authentic”—as if managing other people’s impressions of you (branding) is the equivalent to just being yourself!