Brand Matters : Brand Sabbaths

The necessity of taking the time to pause and reflect on your branding initiatives

Unlike the infamous Energizer Bunny, who has unstoppable energy, most brand leaders simply don't. Even the most enterprising leaders must manage their companies' limited resources of passion, dollars and time.

In today's frenzied pace, this is a practice that rarely gets intentional and quality "thinkabout" time. We think our energy pie is limitless, that true grit will somehow always carry our goals, that we'll find budget money somewhere and that we can do it all. It's a breathless pattern for brands these days.

Our "just do it" impulsivity sometimes tricks us into thinking we are making progress. But, in fact, we may very well be regressing. Many companies actually unintentionally add to their customers' brand confusion by all these activities.

We need to pause. We need to consider giving ourselves a bit of a brand sabbath. Yes, that ancient spiritual practice of rest and reflection. A time out for refreshment for our brand souls. A time to reflect on exactly where we are spending our energy and how we are living our brand days. The busier we are, the more this time of brand spaciousness is critically required.

The type A Energizer Bunny in all of us balks at this. We resist it fervently as we jump into execution, execution, execution. We get charged up by ticking things off our brand "to do" lists.

I can hear the backlash chatter already: "But I can't take the time right now. It's impossible to stop. Who will do it all? This is important. Very important. This is urgent. Very urgent. This is for The Board. This is going to have high visibility. This is a make or break. If we don't do it now, our competitors will." And on and on and on. Living in crisis mode, we tend to specialize in resistance.

Steven Pressfield writes quite convincingly about Resistance in his book, "The War of Art." For him, it is such a force that it earns a capital R. He believes that "most of us have two lives: the life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance." Pressfield is certain that resistance is a force that must be dealt with. "We can never eliminate resistance. It will never go away. But we can outsmart it, " he says.

I recommend Pressfield's work because I think most brand leaders resist the practice of thinkabout time. It is hard work to ask ourselves about the brand we are creating by default and the unlived brand we want to be creating. It is hard work to stop doing and start reflecting. It is hard work to turn off the distractions. It is hard work to simplify. To focus. To step out of the frenzy. To take a brand sabbath.