Imagine you walk into a room full of puppies and they all want your attention. They all come running at you. You look right and left and you are surrounded with little wagging tails. You can’t resist, you have to pet each one to make them happy.
Now what if the puppies turn into humans, the story now changes. You step outside of your body to look at the situation from an objective point of view. You see a need to fit in, a need for keeping the harmony, a fear of not being liked and this need to please people. Ask yourself this: Do I ever find myself caught in a web of worry about what others think of me, my brand image, or my art therapy business idea?
Through my discoveries art therapists struggle with people-pleasing, the need to balance the worlds of authenticity and audience perception is like walking on eggshells that justify expectations.
The question here is how can we break free from the cage of people-pleasing and build a brand image that connects with you and your ideal client? Let’s walk the path together towards self-discovery and mindset transformation, and give into the worlds of letting go, embracing new beliefs, and crafting a brand perception that speaks to your specific ideal audience.
Unpacking the Pressure of External Perception
The mental behaviors of seeking validation, self-doubt and people-pleasing are actually holding you back from success in your art therapy business. Distance yourself from these mental behaviors and start focusing on training and conditioning your mind to not be distracted by the puppies. Your focus is to develop a stronger and deeper sense of who you are, so that you don’t blend into other people’s perceptions of you. This causes overthinking, self-doubt and worry about your brand image.
The Weight of Others’ Opinions
Focusing too much on others’ opinions can actually hold you back from pursuing the life you want to create for yourself. It wastes a lot of time, energy, and clutters your mind and causes you more harm than good. This builds up stress in your system. The goal for art therapy business owners is to practice control in seeking validation and paying less attention to what others say about you. Through my own experience of constantly seeking validation from people, I began to notice it becoming a habit. Thus leading to not being able to build self-trust with my own thoughts and decisions. This is why I emphasize training and condition our minds to ignore the wagging tails.
Impact on Creative Expression
Now, if you continue to seek validation from people outside of your market, this gets messy on your side. Why you may ask? You are receiving a lot of different opinions coming from completely different people that share different values, beliefs and experiences. They will project everything onto you that is only creating noise in your headspace that is not valuable to you because they are actually NOT your ideal client. SO they actually don’t matter to you. I want to express to you that a brand needs to speak to a specific audience and those are the only people to seek validation from. Why? This is because they are the people that will support your art therapy brand and it’s really about them not about you. If you keep asking people outside of your niche, market or audience this will change your brand image in a way that will not be healthy to you or your people. This impacts your creative expression in how you should build your brand story, brand personality and visuals. It needs to be between you and your ideal client to decide what visuals resonate with them and to co-create the creative expression the brand radiates together.
Challenges in Building a Personal Brand
The number one challenge I see art therapists face is going through life with a general sense of who they are but nothing further than that. It gets them by on a day to day basis but still they are too focused on serving others and not caring too much about their own inner worlds and foundation. When there is no clear sense of purpose in what you are here to do, your beliefs or values it causes your mind to seek external healing. This can look like pleasing other people to feel good, and putting others values and beliefs first before yours. This skews your personal branding and detachment from yourself and who you are suited to help. If you want to build a strong art therapy brand and be less fearful of other people’s opinions, it starts with developing your own personal philosophy for yourself.
Embracing Authenticity in Your Artistry
When building a brand people will always have a gut feeling towards your brand but it’s focusing on the feelings of the right people. A brand speaks to a specific audience and filters the rest out naturally, so you need to realize that everyone has an opinion but you are in control of which ones to listen to and accept.
It’s essential to solely focus on the specific ideal client you are looking to help and attract because they’re the ones that matter to you and want to hear from. You need your ideal clients to know and feel that your brand is working for them and that both you and the ideal client are aligned in terms of values and goals. Set the others aside.
Feeling and planning play a role in making your brand image, but I do want to emphasize that a brand image is important but what is immensely even more important is to stay true to your vision (the foundation) and not surrender to others opinions of you.
Defining Your Unique Style
It all starts with developing your personal philosophy, a phrase that expresses your beliefs and values. It’s the secret to starting to grow into your unique style. It’s your personal why statement for yourself, it holds your personal calling, beliefs and values. This now is your compass that you will commit to live by personally and professionally. Check out this blog post about ways to start building confidence in your brand identity. https://cmtdsgn.com/doubt-confidence-building-personal-brand-identity-art-therapist/
Identifying Core Values
Everything starts from your values and beliefs because naturally humans either use them to lead, make decisions, or react in a certain way. It’s what connects us to other human beings. I think without the values and beliefs in place we would feel quite lost and not have our true north. Your values help to define the culture you want to create in your art therapy brand but also help to filter out people who aren’t your match. Plus, it illustrates what you care about as an individual. For example my why statement is “Bridge the communication gap between mental health healers and healing seekers; help boost creative play and self expression.” This statement clearly shows that I value clear communication, creativity, harmony and self-expression. Your values are part of building your stronger self and stop you from falling into your people-pleaser behaviors. It all stems from your why statement. In your art therapy brand you will choose three essential values that align with you and your ideal client to build trust. When there is trust there is confidence and support. This is what you need if you feel self-doubt and worry about your brand image. When you have a foundation and principles in place the worries will disappear.
Let’s start with, what is a WHY statement?
It’s a simple, concise message that tells us who you are and what you offer to others. It’s our core belief that drives the ship of your art therapy business. You commit to this in your daily life. This is the key to success because it makes you memorable, impactful and leaves a lasting impression on society. This helps you lead with purpose, be intentional with all that you do and know what truly matters. Lastly, build your reputation and confidence as an expert in the mental health and art therapy realm.
From Simon Sinek’s Book, Start with Why. He goes about saying “ We’re all acquainted with WHAT we do—the products we sell, the services we offer, the jobs we do. A few of us know HOW we do it—the things we think differentiate us or make us unique compared to the rest of the crowd, or our competition. But only a handful of us can clearly articulate WHY we do what we do…” (Sinek)
Then shares what a Why Statement really is “a statement of your value at work as much as it is the reason your friends love you. We don’t have a professional WHY and personal WHY. We are who we are wherever we are. Your contribution is not a product or a service. It’s the thing around which everything you do— the decisions you make, the tasks you perform, the products you sell— aligns to bring about the impact you envision.” – Simon Sinek (Sinek) Get the book here.
He then shares three questions that I want you to take with you today and answer on a piece of paper.
- Why do I exist?
- Why did I get out of bed this morning?
- Why should people care?
Here’s an activity you can start today for yourself.
- Grab a piece of paper and make 3 columns.
- Column #1 title it Work
- Column #2 Find the Meaning
- Column #3 Find Commonalities
1. Look at all the work you’ve done in your life so far. List them all out in column #1 even the ones way by in highschool.
2. In column #2, for each piece of work you’ve done, find the meaning behind the work you did.
3. In column #3, Objectively look at all the work you’ve done and the meaning behind each one and list out commonalities and find a pattern within them all or a few. See what really calls to you and then write it out in a sentence.
4. Use this framework to help you piece ideas together TO ____ SO THAT ____.
Overcoming People-Pleasing Tendencies
I am a people-pleaser myself and discovered it’s something that goes back to childhood upbringing where we were taught to be nice to everyone. We constantly wanted to know if we were making people happy so the pattern of seeking validation was part of this behaviour. But there is this tendency to be too nice and this causes self-neglect and the need to feel good by helping others. There are ways to start taking the necessary steps to get out this pattern. It all starts with conditioning and training the mind.
Recognizing and Addressing Approval Seeking Behavior
First is to set a week that you will monitor your behaviour and see where people-pleasing shows up. Keep a journal with you to catch these moments and who you went to for validation and why. You can catch how many times as well. The more detailed the better. I want you at the end of the week to make a list of all the people-please actions you did and beside each one write an action of what you will do instead.
I want to take this mantra with you on this journey to shift away from validation seeking behavior.
The answers that matter most live inside me and my ideal client.
Setting Boundaries and Prioritizing Self-Expression
The next exercise to help step out of this situation, will help you set personal boundaries for yourself to protect your mental health and where you go for support. That way you can start building trust with yourself and protect your energy and time as well.
- Draw a circle on paper
- Write inside the circle the people who matter to you.
- Outside the circle write the people who don’t matter to you and will ignore their opinions.
This activity visually helps you see who are the right people to go to for help and will support you every step of the way. Your ideal client should be inside that circle, any close friends, and your coach if you have one. Everyone outside that circle you will practice letting go of their opinions.
Post this somewhere in your space as a reminder in case you feel stuck.
Crafting Your Authentic Brand Image
Once you address the internal mental patterns, you can start with planning and reaching out to the people that matter.
You need both strategy and feeling to mold your brand image. They play a role in how to roll out your entire visual system.
Planning Your Brand Perception
Planning is essential before even trying to step into the realms of creating graphics. It starts with knowing your ideal client and what their needs, interests, pain points and desires. What do they like to have in their environment?
Visualizing Your Ideal Audience Interaction
A great activity that I love doing is creating a mind map of your ideal client (the specific person you want to help). You start with giving them a name like “The eldest daughter.” Then you can branch off into topics like pain, characteristics, use metaphors to describe what they like, their interests, desires, goals, introverted, what do they do professionally, their lifestyle. You are essentially building a profile.
With this mind map, take it to your network who is similar to this ideal client that you know well. It can be a friend, family, a past client but someone who knows you well that is inside your circle of people that matter to you. Ask them to name an adjective to the following questions:
- How do I sound to you?
- How do I make you feel?
- And what impact do I bring?
These are things that get you started in knowing your brand identity and image.
After these interviews, reflect on your findings. Is this authentically me? If so, proceed to list out the best adjectives that resonate with you. In the table label Voice, Feeling and Impact. These are now your brand keywords that will drive your graphics.
Navigating the Journey Towards Authenticity
Overcoming Doubts and Fears
These activities above will help to quiet those doubts and fears towards building your own brand image. This is your art therapy brand and you gotta own it! It’s no one else’s; it’s between you and your ideal client and they got your back. But when you build that muscle in self-trust you will begin to see that validation monster shrink.
Embracing Vulnerability and Imperfection
Remember that building a brand is a process and will grow and change as you proceed through your art therapy business journey. Embracing vulnerability and imperfection is needed because it makes you relatable and I think gives you more self-compassion in being gentle with yourself. You are only human after all and we all make mistakes, so when the mistakes do hit don’t let them drag you down. It’s part of the journey and growth in being an art therapy business owner.
Cultivating Self-Confidence and Resilience
Continue living by your why statement and leading with your values and your ideal clients thoughts you will begin to see self-confidence build and resilience will show up for you. Remember it’s a muscle and requires practice on a daily basis for the best results. Make space for inner work and reflect on your journey.
In conclusion,
We traveled through the intricate landscape of seeking validation vs. self-trust in art therapy and personal branding, we’ve uncovered layers of self-discovery and mindset transformation. Just as the metaphorical room filled with puppies transformed into a reflection of our inner struggles with people-pleasing and external validation. We’ve dived through the complexities of balancing authenticity with audience perception. By embracing vulnerability, setting boundaries, experimenting and prioritizing self-expression. We untied the chains of doubt and fear that once held you back. Remember, building a brand rooted in authenticity isn’t about perfection or what others think but about embracing collaboration and growing together as a community of like-minded people with the same values and beliefs. As you continue on your path, may you find peace in your unique voice, and may you confidently craft a brand image that resonates authentically with your ideal audience. Embrace your individuality, trust in your values, and let your genuine expression shine forth, illuminating the path for both yourself and those you serve in the realm of art therapy.
Works Cited
Sinek, Simon. Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. New York, Portfolio / Penguin, 2011.