Over the past two weeks, through the #Interest Spiral course offered by Fresh Times Book, I reflected on my journey of personal branding. Honestly, there have been increasingly more operators of different types appearing in the past six months, and I've felt the pressure keenly. As they say, poverty limits imagination, and lack of knowledge often makes people think they're sufficient. Little do they know that when you think you're at the tower's peak, there's a skylight above waiting for you to reach up and climb through, connecting to another world—and there's even a possibility it's not high enough, making it difficult to climb through that window at all⋯⋯

"When everyone is talking about personal branding, what unique characteristics and irreplaceability do I have?"

For content creators who already have loyal audiences, it's very easy for them to look back and say "I'm managing my personal brand" "Personal branding is important!" and thus influence public perception of that person with an impression of "successful personal brand management," even if they originally didn't think that way. This is the flexible growth mindset that keeps up with the times. For someone like me, comparatively speaking, I basically have no advantages—in fact, it might be a joke.

Always reflecting almost all the time, I used #Zhang Xici's teacher-provided #Life Design Cards in class to recognize my irreplaceability, and it lies in "the media industry." Although the public has a poor impression of it, this is an opportunity—an opportunity to help the public better understand this field.

Looking back, I've been a new media editor, editorial staff; worked as a TV news reporter while contributing columns to the online news department, and now I'm a print magazine feature reporter. There aren't many people in the media industry with this kind of experience, because their ways of thinking are completely different. Even if each of these experiences only lasted a year or two, the media landscape doesn't change much—working across media sectors has become an advantage instead.

Of course, media experience has also given me first-hand knowledge of the industry and market, network connections and communication skills, and the ability to bridge different fields. This class also made me re-examine my own resources.

I was fortunate to primarily cover the "education beat." Many people think education is a niche topic, but as I covered it, I found it particularly interesting. Education is needed everywhere. Perhaps many would think education is limited to K-12 institutional education, but for me, I instead reflected on the limitations K-12 brings.

I happened to be in the first cohort of the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum, like the white mice for the 12-Year National Education Curriculum debate that's been going on endlessly now. Textbooks from the National Institute for Compilation and Translation unexpectedly turned into different versions from Kang Hsuan, San Min, and Han Lin. I couldn't borrow my older sister's books to look at, and couldn't discuss with good friends from different schools.

From first grade being confused through ninth grade being bewildered by the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum, okay, we were also the first cohort using different publishers' exam questions for the Basic Competence Test, and we had to study textbooks from other schools too—basically impossible to prepare for completely⋯ In any case, a chaotic education system meant I don't even remember what I learned 😔😔😔

Not to mention that I chose the science track in high school⋯ attended evening division university and was always filming instead of studying. Basically, the skills and knowledge I should have used entering the workforce were only discovered after actually starting work, and like knowing nothing, I could only buy books to absorb the authors' life wisdom, or attend lectures and purchase online or offline courses to complete myself⋯

I think the path of personal brand management is a journey of continuous learning, starting from things you're good at and things you love, expanding outward to absorb insufficient and lacking knowledge and skills; tackling things you want to do but haven't touched yet to go back and refine your abilities. Once these skills continuously layer on top of each other, you become irreplaceable—not by constantly saying "I'm special" and becoming special, but by continuously challenging new things, integrating your abilities and insights, shaping yourself into someone truly irreplaceable.

Postscript:

  1. Because I learned about Zhang Xici in the very first year City Nomad launched, and coincidentally, I attended overseas events with her poetry idol younger brother, so I had a small connection. Being able to take her class and personally experience her warmth really felt incomparably wonderful 😍😍😍

  2. After using the Life Design Cards, I immediately messaged the founder to sign up for the instructor training course—wait for me to complete it!

  3. I introduced myself using lucky numbers that day; I chose 37 because March 7th is the day I created my WordPress, and the world became very different after that day 😌

  4. The girl sitting next to me that day was a 19-year-old university dropout who wanted to write and asked me many questions actively. I forgot to add her Facebook that day—I hope you message me

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