As an Advertising major, I’ve learned a lot about brands and rebranding. This Spring Semester, I’ve thought more about myself and my own brand. In a sense, this blog is the documentation of my mental and emotional rebranding of myself. I so strongly desire to be this woman of my own dreams and to obtain this image I’ve set for myself. It is mentally hard because I have to fight my current mentality and not the act the way I feel. I have to think before I act and not let my emotions affect my mannerisms.

Who am I?

I’m the words I say, the activities I partake in, the music I listen to, the food I eat, the company I share, and most importantly, what I do when no one is around. I’m an impulsive person – I run on my emotions, it can be seen in the words I lash out at others and my shopping behavior. I’m someone who trusts her gut instinct quite often. As an intuitive person, I’m not known to be the type that thinks before she speaks. I’ve noted this trait however, it’s not ingrained within me that I must watch what I say just yet. I’m someone who doesn’t plan to stay the same, I don’t ever desire to be listed as “predictable”.

What do I represent?

In a modest and humble way, I would say that I represent individuality, independence, and sometimes, strength. My individuality stems from the fact that I know that we are all born unique so that we never have to be anyone else. For quite some time, I looked at my fellow peers and felt the need to blend in with them, to feel normal, to feel accepted, to feel “okay”. However, that’s never the case. Now, I speak my mind and do what I want, which goes hand in hand with my independence. The independence I’ve developed hasn’t stopped growing, as a young girl who doesn’t mind doing things alone, it’s transformed me into someone who doesn’t need anyone. The mixture of individuality and independence has allowed me to become the strong woman I am now. I’ve conquered the battles I never thought I would win but the war never ends – I’m still fighting to be better.

What defines me?

If we’re referring to specific brands that define my brand, it would be: organic food, the color pink, Sensodyne, Sriracha, Apple, and Toyota. If it were words, words that define my brand are: loud, confident, humorous, sarcastic, and fun. If I were to be the weather for a specific day of the year, it would be when Summer just starts, but you can still feel Spring in the air. There aren’t much winds anymore, the sky with not a cloud in sight, but it’s not too hot, so you won’t sweat excessively. These aspects are part of my identity and if one or two aspects were taken away, I wouldn’t quite fully feel like myself.

However, if anyone knows anything about advertising, it must be known that a brand that stays the same forever is doomed for failure and termination. There’s always something to be changed and improved on, as the times change, so must a brand. I, myself, know that the current person I am, is not the brand I will remain forever. I’m not where I want to be or need to be and the work to build up a different brand image requires a tremendous amount of mental workshops and a change of attitude, too.

Now that I’ve rambled on and on about my brand, tell me, what’s your brand? Do you like where your brand is right now or do you want to reposition yourself into a better brand?

* This post is dedicated to and inspired by my Advertising professor, Keith Kesler. Because of him, I cannot ever look at a commercial the same way (and that’s a good thing). Thank you for everything you’ve taught me.

One thing I’ve noticed about myself is how easy I can let go of relationships and people. I can cut off ties faster than I could ever mend them.

I’m comfortable in my routine of letting people go that being close to too many people makes me feel uncomfortable. To put it into perspective, let’s say that I am formulated to only be close to ‘X’ amount of people. If I become close to X+1 people, I start to feel frazzled. I don’t have a large circle and don’t ever plan to start. A dangerous thought that I always have is when someone annoys me or makes me enraged, I always think, “I don’t need you in my life and I can let go of you easy.”

Whenever someone crosses me, I cross them out of my life. We can go from being close to not talking anymore in seconds. I’ve never been the type to forgive or forget, so I can and will hold onto grudges until time ends. To be quite frank, there are people I plan to never talk to ever again once college ends. I know that as I depart Southern California and return to Northern California, there will be relationships that are doomed to rot. As expected, I’ve been mentally preparing myself for the ending of many friendships. However, this attitude is one I should not bring home. If I keep this up, how could I ever make new friends or keep current friends?

This year, as I’m trying to practice vulnerability, I am fighting the notion that people are disposable, that people are just objects that can be tossed away, and that I don’t need people in my life at all. It’s mentally unhealthy to always want to push people away and to stay a lone wolf. This mentality of running with scissors is dangerous and I could end up hurting myself, which inevitably does happen. I end up being stuck in my own captivity.

“While social networks are fundamentally and distinctively human, and ubiquitous, they should not be taken for granted.” – Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler

In my hasty moments of anger and bitterness, I have to remind myself that even though I want to be alone, loneliness is a feeling worse than the annoyance of companions. Friendship is something I should never take for granted. But, with the act of removing people out of my life like it’s the cool thing to do, it shows that I am taking people for granted, and that’s not right.

So, what’s left to do? Indeed, the first step is to learn to accept people’s flaws, because people will never change (in that ways I’d like them to), and I need to know that not everyone I meet is toxic. There are countless amounts of positive and great people that I’ve yet to let in my life because of my cautious ways. The road I’ve constructed for myself just lead to dead ends. The act of constantly playing it safe will lead me to a permanent pit stop. I can’t stop this car ride of life and friendship. I have to stop my habit of cutting off the engine and just drive.

It’s true that we can never choose our life or what happens to us. No one wants their mother to hit them or their dad to leave them, but it happens and for me, the only thing I can do is change my own future. My past was hard and I pushed a lot of memories in the back burner, but I’ve grown so much from the ashes of what was once the young me. I’ve rose from the grave of lost memories but I haven’t reached my highest potential yet.

Some people never change but my perspective of the world can. If I can learn to be less cold and distant, maybe I’ll warm up to people a little bit.

I can never change the way people will treat me but I can change the way I treat myself and how I react from it. As much as I want to do certain things, I know I can’t. It’s malicious and wrong – revenge never solves anything but builds more hatred and animosity. The day I learn to forgive is the day my whole life will change.

For a large chunk of my life, I strongly believed in karma. “You get what you deserve.” “Karma will bite you in the ass someday.” Any of these sound familiar?

If someone treated me in a bad way, I told myself that karma will get them, making it even, and somehow that thought made me feel better, back then anyway. On the other side, whenever something misfortunate came my way, I thought, “This is karma for doing [something irrelevant] beforehand.” But as I think deeper about the series of events that occurred in my life, karma really doesn’t make sense or exist at all. There are questions where karma cannot ever be the answer.

What did I do to receive the abandonment of my father when I was just born? Where’s karma now to put the person who molested me in jail? Did the person who robbed my house two years ago ever get their own house robbed, too? What about the person who threatened my mother with a knife? My little sister, what did she do, as a young kid, to get holes in her heart?

Saying “karma will get them back” is the lazy way out. Shit happens because that’s life. Life isn’t always going to be perfect. There are people who have committed crimes who live life prison-free. There will be people, who are angels on Earth, who get cancer and pass away. There are many good deeds that go unnoticed and wrongdoings that go unpunished.

Bad things happen to everyone. But life isn’t all bad – there are good things that happen, and karma isn’t the reason why those events take place. People who do good things because they think they’ll get “good karma” back aren’t doing good at all. There’s greed behind their actions, a desire to receive something back, and there lies the secret intentions. I truly believe that if you do something nice, you cannot expect something back and it must be out of pure generosity, and if not, are you really doing good? Think about it. This pop culture definition of karma doesn’t exist and it’s not real. At least, not in my world.

Karma won’t save or help you with your desired revenge or expected rewards – be your own hero and save the day by making it better, not bitter.