How To Live True To Who You Really Are

by Carmel O' Reilly

What’s Inside this Book

Welcome to my book about how to build your true personal brand identity throughout the chap- ters of your WorkLife Story. Here is a preview of what’s inside, along with the main ideas and the meaning behind these.

WorkLife is our life at work, where we spend one third of our lives. It is also the impact our work has on our life outside of work, and the impact our life outside of work has on our work. All areas of our life in and out of work are so intrinsically linked, they cannot be separated, nor do I believe should they. I believe WorkLife needs to be considered holistically.

Your true personal brand identity is who you are, the way you think about yourself, the way you are viewed by the world, and the characteristics that define you.

In this book I tell eight stories:

1. The Outside In – Red Shoes, the Good Wife and a Pink Purse: Carmel’s stories of how style can allow identity, personality and uniqueness shine through.
2 & 3. Headscarves and Tutus: Joan and Lila’s stories about there being no good or bad ways of dressing; from minimalist to flamboyant, it’s about honouring who you are.
4, 5 & 6. The Inside Out – When I’m Being Me: Carmel’s three short stories about what makes her who she is.
7. You’re Not Generic, So Why Act That Way?: Chloe’s story of how she lost her unique and dis- tinct point of view when she shifted away from who she was.
8. I Knew I was Having an Identity Crisis when I Realised I had Become Two Different People: Sally’s story of how she was living two different lives.

I share the exercises that helped to work through these challenging situations to resolve the dilemmas. I present these exercises as the following assignments for you to work through:

Understanding Who You Are from the Outside In Assignment
This assignment is to help you to recognise how you express yourself through your style.

When Your Being You Assignment
This assignment is to help you to recognise your own uniqueness and attributes that form your personal brand identity from the inside out.

Develop a Practice of Continuous Self-Feedback Assignment
This assignment is to help you to pay attention to who you are from the outside in and the inside out.

Develop a Practice of Insightful and Effective Self-Questioning Assignment
This assignment is to help you to continue to go deep inside your true personal brand identity by asking insightful and effective questions.

Navigating Your True Personal Brand Identity in Times of Uncertainty Assignment
This assignment is to help you to navigate those times when you’re facing identity crises.

Question Your Beliefs Assignment
This assignment is to help you to look at limiting stories you’re telling yourself.

Letting Go Assignment
This assignment is to help you to let go of anything you need to from the past.

Examine Your WorkLife Journey Assignment
This assignment is to help you to look at what is still relevant and what is no longer relevant about your personal brand identity.

45 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 17, 2020

About the author

Carmel O’ Reilly is the founder of School of WorkLife. She was born and grew up in Ireland, and now lives in Shoreditch, London.

Her work and subsequently her first book, Your WorkLife Your Way, and its companion workbook, focus on helping people live their best WorkLives by managing their learning, development and growth, through effective self-feedback, insightful questions and the ability to shape and tell their unique story.

Her School of WorkLife book series tells WorkLife stories of the obstacles, failures, and successes people encountered in their WorkLife. Each book includes the exercises that helped navigate these situations, which are presented as assignments for readers to work through and adapt to their challenging WorkLife situations.

Her books are designed to help you gain insight and inspiration in your chosen area of WorkLife, and then support you in achieving what is important to you in your WorkLife learning, development and growth. You will learn to take ownership of your strengths and potential, as well as assessing your challenges to determine where you are stuck, to then uncover solutions to move forward.

Her new book, WorkLife Book Club Volume One takes you on a journey through the streets of Shoreditch, East London, as the members share culinary experiences, while discussing WorkLife struggles and successes through the wisdom found in the books they read.

The premise behind the WorkLife Book Club book is that experiences we have in our WorkLife shape our understanding of the world. Stories help communicate truths about human behaviours and relationships, bringing an opportunity for change and development. Books help anchor WorkLife conversations through characters, plots and settings, enabling a range of issues to be worked through.

"My stated mission is to guide learning through reading. I also have a secret mission, which is to draw attention to stories of change and active decision making – people standing up and saying they want to do something different with their WorkLife. I want to highlight stories, books and discussions that focus on in-depth portrayals of subjects inner feelings, thoughts and motivations. While readers will not encounter the exact scenarios they read about, they will be able to use an increasingly finely tuned ability to understand and respond to multiple competing viewpoints." Carmel O' Reilly.

You can connect with Carmel through her website: https://schoolofworklife.com where you can sign up to receive stories that are grounded in the reality of real situations of the ups and downs people experience in their WorkLife. People's incredible stories designed to be helpful, insightful and inspiring. On her website you can also access Carmel's Learning Through Reading series - stories inspired by real WorkLife struggles and successes, presented as case studies for group discussion.