Being and becoming: from ancient philosophy to building a strong personal brand

We live in a time when everything seems to move faster than we can follow. This constant acceleration puts a strain on our identity. Who are we, really, when roles, contexts, and expectations keep changing? And how do we remain coherent, both in our careers and in our private lives, when the ground beneath us never stops moving?

These are not new questions. Long before us, Greek philosophers were already wrestling with the tension between what changes and what remains. Their insights offer inspiration for finding a way through: a reminder that identity is not just about resisting change, but about understanding how the two can coexist.

Parmenides was the first to insist that beyond the shifting appearances, there must be something immutable. He maintained that change is just illusion. Reality, in its deepest truth, is permanent. It is a radical thought, but also comforting: behind the noise of daily life, there is something that simply is.

Plato tried to reconcile this permanence with the change we see every day. His solution was to imagine two levels: the world of becoming, where everything shifts, and the world of being, where eternal Forms exist. The changing world is real, but it points toward something deeper and immutable.

Aristotle took the debate a step further. For him, change is not illusion, nor is it a separate world. Change is part of being itself. He introduced the idea of entelechy: the inner drive of every being to realize its potential. The acorn is not just an acorn; it is already, in potency, an oak tree. Reality is a continuous unfolding of what things are meant to become.

On the other side stood Heraclitus, who insisted: everything flows (panta rhei). You cannot step into the same river twice because both you and the river are in motion. But he was not describing chaos. For him, there is a logos, a hidden order that makes sense of transformation. Stability, he said, does not come from resisting change but from recognizing the patterns within it.

In modern terms, Heraclitus may be the philosopher closest to how we live today. Careers shift, industries evolve, and we ourselves change with them. Our challenge is not to cling desperately to the past, but to discern the underlying coherence, the logos, that gives continuity to our journey.

Preserving the essence: autopoiesis

Centuries after the Greeks, two Chilean biologists, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, introduced a concept that resonates strongly with this ancient debate: autopoiesis. Their insight was that living systems are defined by their ability to continuously regenerate themselves. A living being interacts with its environment, adapts, and evolves, but it preserves its organization, the pattern that makes it what it is.

Autopoiesis is a beautiful metaphor for our personal identity. Just like living systems, we are exposed to constant change. Contexts shift, careers evolve, technologies appear and disappear, and the people around us come and go. Yet through all this, there is something that must remain: our essence, the core that makes us who we are.

A strong personal brand works in the same way.

• It preserves its inner compass, the values and purpose that give coherence.

• It evolves in form and expression, adapting to new roles, new markets, new audiences.

• And it creates continuity not by resisting change, but by integrating it into a story that still makes sense.

This is where autopoiesis meets Greek philosophy. To enact it in a positive, evolutionary way, a personal brand must:

• Be aware of its essence, as Parmenides would remind us, because behind the noise of change there is always something permanent.

• Recognize its context, as Plato suggested, where the world of becoming constantly shifts but always points toward something deeper.

• Follow its entelechy, as Aristotle taught, the inner drive to realize its potential, a notion that today we can read as personal purpose.

Seen this way, autopoiesis is more than survival. It is the ability to interact with the context, adapt to it, preserve the essence, and fulfil one’s purpose in life.

From philosophy to practice

A personal brand, like a living system, must activate tools that help it maintain its essence and evolve with the market. To do so, it is important to understand what we want, what is our entelechy, and what we call success. The vision of success is a great tool to approach this. It helps us define success in a broad sense: not only in terms of external achievements, but also in coherence with our values and with the impact we want to have on others. I have written extensively about this in other articles, but it is worth recalling here that having a clear vision of success is the first step to building a sustainable and meaningful brand.

Other tools help us preserve our essence while adapting to changing contexts. A dynamic interpretation of positioning is one. Positioning is not a rigid label, but a living definition of where we want to stand in the minds of others. It evolves with us, while still maintaining a clear focus.

An accurate segmentation is another powerful tool. By identifying the audiences we truly want to serve, we can bring forward a strong value proposition that remains aligned with our essence, yet responds to real and important needs of the customer.

And finally, a strategic narrative ensures that our brand voice remains coherent over time. At the same time, it allows us to generate plots that adapt to the emergencies of the moment, keeping our story relevant and alive without losing its foundation.

These tools remind us that personal branding is not about choosing between being and becoming. It is about weaving them together, preserving our essence while moving forward with purpose, coherence, and resilience.