When you change careers, you may have some trouble at first convincing yourself that you aren't a "fraud" or an "impostor syndrome." Lots of people experience "impostor syndrome" at some point during their career, after all. When you go from one career into a brand new career, thinking of yourself differently and embracing your new identity may take some time.
That is where the process of rebranding comes in. You need to consider your personal brand, your professional brand, your in-person brand, and your online brand. To learn more about what I mean, listen to this episode of Teachers in Transition.
When you change careers, you may have some trouble at first convincing yourself that you aren't a "fraud" or an "impostor syndrome." Lots of people experience "impostor syndrome" at some point during their career, after all. When you go from one career into a brand new career, thinking of yourself differently and embracing your new identity may take some time.
That is where the process of rebranding comes in. You need to consider your personal brand, your professional brand, your in-person brand, and your online brand. To learn more about what I mean, listen to this episode of Teachers in Transition.
Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is Kitty Boitnott. I'm a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for"Teachers in Transition." In some episodes I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes I'll be talking about career transition. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track? These are questions that you need answers to and I can help you find those answers. My name is Kitty Boitnott. Welcome to"Teachers in Transition." Welcome back. This is Episode 16 of the"Teachers in Transition" podcast and Youtube channel, and today I want to talk a little bit about the importance of rebranding yourself when you are in the midst of any sort of career transition. This is important because it is something that goes on inside of your head, and it requires you to tell yourself something new about yourself instead of identifying yourself as whatever it is that you've been doing in your previous career. This may be very difficult for any career professional. I'm not sure. I know from my own experience and from working with teachers in particular that teachers struggle a little bit with this. They've identified for so long as a teacher. In my case, I was an elementary school librarian for over 33 years. It was, I mean that's half of my life if you think about it. So when when you've been identifying yourself in a certain way for so long, suddenly switching gears and thinking of yourself in some other way is difficult. Challenging. It's certainly not, and over time I began to think of myself as a career coach and stress management coach and presenter and author instead of as an elementary school teacher or librarian. But it took awhile. And when you are undertaking any kind of transition from one career path into another I wa you, to be gentle with yourself and not push yourself, not, not rush it in in the way of making yourself feel guilty or feel bad or feel uncertain or worse. I mean the worst case scenario is that you just give into imposter syndrome. Now, imposter syndrome is real. I've heard people talk about it just recently. I heard two very accomplished professionals who have tons of experience between the two of them. They both talked about how at a couple of times during their esteemed careers, they felt a sense of imposter syndrome. If you're not familiar with the term, it's a sense of being a fraud, not being who you're presenting yourself to be. And a fear of being found out to not be as qualified as, as you say you are, or as expert in an area as you say you are a and there, let's face it, there are a lot of imposters out there, but a lot of people who shouldn't feel imposter syndrome feel it anyway. It's natural, it's normal. The thing is that you don't want to give into it to the extent that it stops you from growing and evolving into the next path that you want to undertake for yourself. So in thinking in terms of your brand, and I think of it sort of separately as a personal brand and then a professional brand and then there's the in person brand and there's the uh, social media brand. All of these different brands are ways that you define yourself and that other people began to define you and identify you. Well, what it all boils down to at the end of the day is what is your reputation? When people hear your name, what do they think of? Do they think of someone who is professional, who is always on time, who's punctual, who's always prepared, who's always always done homework before showing up for a meeting? Or is your brand, you're always late, you've never done the work ahead of time. You're always sort of trying to get things done by the seat of your pants. You're a procrastinator. You let other people take the load and you shift the responsibility for whatever your work should have been onto other people. And if things go wrong, do you then blame people or let them be scapegoated instead of you taking responsibility? All of that has something to do with your online in person, professional and, and personal brand. So the good news is you can always rebrand yourself. Think of companies that have changed their logos or changed the facades on their buildings changed, uh, even even rebranded their entire mission and vision in some way that when you think of certain company names, you think of a particular impression. Just consider if I say the word Google, what comes to mind? Search engines, right? It's how you find stuff online so you receive it. It's become so prevalent in our culture today that it's become a verb. Google that this, look it up on Google. Uh, Amazon. What do you think of when you think of Amazon? Fast service. Get anything you want, you know, immediate free shipping. Those are the kinds of things, especially if you have a prime subscription. Those may be the kinds of things that you think of when you hear Amazon. Disney, you have a certain impression of Disney when you hear the name, Disneyland and Disney World, anything related to Disney. I'm Macintosh or Apple or Dell or Hewlett Packard, Whole Foods versus Food Lion, just as a few as a few examples. These are all examples of brands and brandings that have been done purposefully for the purpose of attracting a certain type of person to do business with that particular company or business. When you are rebranding yourself for your new career, your new endeavor, whatever it is that you're undertaking for yourself, you are taking on a new identity so to speak. And the really good news is that you can choose to rebrand yourself anytime you want. It a little bit longer for other people to catch up to the new you. So they may think of you as the way you were before, but if you consistently show up in person or online in a new way, then you become, eventually you'll become identified with that brand. Now what that basically means, let me just use myself as an example because I know my own example better than anybody. Like I said, I was a elementary school librarian for 33 years. Part of that time I taught sixth grade language arts for half a day. But even then I was a middle school assistant librarian. So being a librarian was part of my, um, professional identity. With that in mind. I don't think I have to tell you what the stereotype of a librarian is. It's maybe not as much the case today as it used to be. But back in the days when I first became a librarian, the stereotype was of a little, you know, dowdy, frumpy, little old maid, if you will, somebody who never married and never had any, um, real life experience other than just going to work and reading all the time and being very quiet and mousy even. And I admit, I know some, at the time when I first went into library work, I met a lot of, of those ladies who start me as being very similar to that stereotype. Little on the frumpy side, little on the dowdy side, not taking a lot of care or interest in their appearance, um, being very intellectual,, almost ethereal in their conversation. And they were lovely ladies. But I determined that I did not want to identify in that way. And so even though my job title was elementary school librarian for most of that 33 years that I was a working professional, I chose to not dress in a frumpy way. I chose to uh, take interest in care in my appearance. I, um, made a deliberate choice in how I chose to show up, if you will, for work every day because I wanted not to be identity. I wanted people to actually say, I guess this was also part of my brand. I wanted people to stink if they didn't say it out loud, well you don't look like a librarian. And on occasion I did hear that, but that was what I was going for. That was what I wanted my brand to be. I was an elementary school librarian who didn't necessarily look like or act like an elementary school librarian. I hope that makes sense to you. As I transitioned out of that work and went to be President of the Virginia Education Association, I had a good old fashioned dose of imposter syndrome myself in the beginning. In the first few months. Um not so much afraid that I would be found out as an imposter, as a fraud. I certainly knew the organization in and out. I'd been a member for over 30 years. I knew I knew the fundamentals of the organization, but honestly I didn't know anything about being in charge of that large an organization. I had been President of my local organization on a couple of occasions earlier in my career, but nothing on the scale of President of the state organization. And it took a few months of of learning from other Presidents who had preceded me, other Presidents from other states who had been in the job longer than I had been, other people who were there to help me and guide me and show me the way before I began to feel comfortable in that role. And so that was a sort of rebranding. And then when I left the VEA, I had to go through the process again because suddenly after four years, I wasn't the President of the Virginia Education Association anymore. I was the Past President. Someone else took that role and I needed to redefine, reinvent, and retool myself because it was at that point that I realized that I was too burnout and too tired to want to go back to teaching, which was the option that I was offered. So it took a little while and when I first established my business as a life strategies and stress management coach, I had another bout of imposter syndrome. I did a lot of pro bono work during those first few months so that I could get some experience. Uh, interestingly enough, people treated me as though I knew what I was talking about, even though at times I felt like I was making it up as I went along. But that is part of the process of, you know, you've heard of faking it until you make it? Well, sometimes you have to do that. Not to say that you are fraudulent about it. I had gone through training as a Life Strategies coach. I had passed an exam. I had done the same for Stress Management coaching. I had taken a course. I had passed an exam, I was a certified on paper. I had had the certificate to show for it, certified as a Life Strategies coach and as a Stress Management coach. But for those first few months until I got some real life experience under my belt, until I began to see which strategies worked for the people that I was working with and for, I had to fake it until I felt like I could make it. And that was all going on seven years ago. And now I can't imagine doing anything else from what I'm doing now. So I urge you to consider what is it that you would like to do next? What do you need to do in order to redefine retool and rebrand yourself? Uh, how do you need to reinvent yourself as you move from what you're doing now, whether it's teaching or working in the healthcare industry or sales or whatever it is that you may be doing now that isn't lighting you up and filling your heart and making you feel fulfilled and satisfied. What is it that you think you might like to do moving forward that you would be much happier doing? And maybe you need to experiment a little bit and play with some possibilities? That's part of what I help people do in the course of my work. Just play with possibilities. Consider what is it that you think you would like to do in place of what you're doing now? Because at the end of the day, I tell my clients this all the time and I believe it to be true"Work that feels fulfilling leads to a much happier life all the way around." If you're doing work that feels good, that makes you feel like you're being fulfilled and then you're satisfied doing, you feel like it's meaningful, it makes a difference in your health, it makes a difference in your relationships, it makes a difference in every aspect of your life. And I think life is simply too short to be spending it caught up in a career or a job that you hate going to every Monday morning and you drag yourself through all week long to get through till Friday so you can, you know, have that weekend. You, you live for the weekends, you live for your vacations, you for your teacher, you live for the summers off. Life's too short to be spending it, waiting for the next break, waiting for the next weekend. And you have so much more to offer in a line of work where you're going to feel fulfilled and lit up and excited and enthused. So, know that it's possible for you to take on a new kind of work, to transition from one career into another. And that part of the process includes learning how to rebrand yourself so that you can be, um, doing the kind of work that you enjoy doing. And then you embrace the new identity, the new you that you are becoming. And at the end of the day, aren't we always becoming something new? If as long as we're alive and willing to learn, we're always learning something new. So that's it for today. I hope that is a little helpful for you. Think in terms of how do you want to rebrand yourself as you move from your old identity, your old career, whatever it is that you've been doing that you no longer enjoy into your new identity, your new way of being in the world, how you're going to show up in person online, uh, whether it's uh, or your personal brand or your professional brand. That's it for today. Do subscribe to the Youtube Channel or the podcast today if you found this information helpful. Next week I'll be talking about another stress management strategy. Hope you have a great week. Until then, this is Kitty Boyton out of"Teachers in Transition." Have a great week. So there you have it, an episode of"Teachers in Transition." I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to"Teachers in Transition" so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode. I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at KittyBoitnott@BoitnottCoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. Hi, I'm Kitty Boitnott and this is"Teachers in Transition."