Positional Drift
You Don’t Have a Positioning Problem. You Have a Noise Problem.
Lately, I’ve felt repulsed.
Not mildly irritated. Not “probably need a weekend off.”
Repulsed.
By the sheer performance of it all.
The verbose cry for attention.
The strategic shouting.
The constant clutching to be seen, heard, validated, amplified.
And for a sensitive person building a business right now, the noise is not just distracting.
It’s piercing.
So loud, so varied, so contradictory that if you carry even a flicker of doubt about whether you belong in entrepreneurship, it’s enough to tip you into analysis paralysis for months.
Because now we’re not just being told to build a business.
We’re being told to become a whole economic ecosystem.
A founder.
A creator.
A personal brand.
A portfolio career.
Multiple clients.
Multiple offers.
Multiple collaborations.
Multiple income streams.
All spinning mid-air at once, as though burnout is now a sign of ambition.
And somewhere inside all that chaos, we’re supposed to stay clear, original, strategic, magnetic, and deeply grounded.
Sure. No problem. Very casual.
Here’s the question I keep coming back to:
How do we hold our mastery in place when so much is vying for our attention?
How do we hold onto the power we need to create?
Because the truth is, when you dip your toe in to see what everyone else is creating, beware.
You rarely come back with “inspiration.”
You come back with distortion.
First your footing goes.
Then your centre.
Then, before you know it, your own voice starts sounding suspiciously far away.
The attention economy is eroding your position
We talk about positioning as if it’s purely strategic.
Your niche.
Your category.
Your differentiator.
Your one-line value proposition.
Your clean little “why this, why you” sentence.
And yes, positioning includes all of that.
But before it becomes language, it is something else.
It is energetic.
It is your ability to stay rooted in who you are, what you see, what you believe, and how you work — without being knocked off centre every time someone louder enters the room.
That’s the part people miss.
They think they have a messaging problem.
Often, they have a contamination problem.
Because look around.
There’s the anarchist speaking in cold daylight language, drenched in anger and bitterness at injustice.
There’s the intellect flattening themselves into “plain language,” because apparently substance now has to wear lip gloss to be commercially viable.
There are people withholding thoughts, words, and concepts for effect.
Then there’s the endless sharing — oversharing, really — in the name of personal brand, until nothing personal is left.
And over all of it: the images, impressions, claims, and illusions of success being hurled at us all day long.
Coaches who made eight figures in three months with one £27 framework.
“Sell one product. Sell it well.”
Experts with twelve offers telling you to simplify.
Consultants casually implying that if you’re not in the top 10%, you may as well crawl onto the heap and accept your fate.
AI tools and “thought leaders” promising to replicate years of strategic thinking before your coffee goes cold — despite never having built anything with AI beyond a half-baked carousel and a dangerous level of confidence.
And then, my personal favourite: people giving very loud advice about building things they have never actually built.
Ever.
Some are standing quietly on family money they don’t mention.
A network they inherited.
A body that was never the obstacle they’re now charging others to overcome.
And no, it’s not any one thing.
It’s the cumulative weight of all of it.
That’s what makes it dangerous.
Because eventually, the noise doesn’t stay outside you.
It gets inside your thinking.
And starts posing as your own voice.
That is the moment your position begins to slip.
Not because you never had one.
But because you haven’t been clean recently.
Clean enough to hear yourself again
Clean of the pressure.
Clean of the performance.
Clean of the endless “if you don’t do this now, you’ll disappear” panic-marketing dressed up as business wisdom.
You need enough distance to hear yourself again.
Not the algorithm.
Not the theatre.
Not the fear.
Not the quiet drip of disillusionment making its way into your system day by day.
Your voice.
Without confusion.
Without dilution.
Without distraction.
Without everybody else’s urgency colonising your mind.
This accumulation is dangerous.
And I think we need to stay very awake right now.
Very, very awake.
Because if we don’t, there comes a moment — and mine arrived at 4:30am — when you realise your exhaustion is not just overwork.
It’s overexposure.
Too much input.
Too much access.
Too many people who have not earned a place in your mind.
The strongest positioning move might be stillness
As a brand strategist and self-mastery coach, I spend my days helping people get clear on who they are, what they stand for, and how to articulate that with precision.
And my number one piece of advice right now is not more content.
It’s not another framework.
Not more visibility.
Not “just test and iterate.”
Not one more hour circling the drain on Instagram trying to decode what the market wants from you.
It’s this:
Go and be still somewhere. Away from it all.
Truly away.
Because sometimes the most strategic move you can make for your positioning is to remove yourself from the forces deforming it.
That’s what happened to me.
I wasn’t supposed to be there.
My flight diverted.
Istanbul had other plans.
I ended up at a friend’s house with a small white dog who climbed into my lap like she’d been sent as nervous system support.
And in that moment, something in me stopped bracing.
I asked my friend if I could stay.
Uninvited.
Unplanned.
Unexpectedly.
She didn’t ask how long.
I didn’t know.
All I knew was this:
I needed to stop.
Not quit.
Not collapse.
Not reinvent my life in a linen dress with a dramatic notebook.
Just stop.
Long enough to hear myself again.
This is what real positioning asks of you
Positioning is not just deciding how to be perceived.
It is deciding what gets access to your mind.
It is protecting your perspective fiercely enough that when you speak, your words are actually yours.
That’s why so many brilliant people struggle to position themselves clearly.
It isn’t always a lack of skill.
It isn’t even a lack of strategy.
Sometimes they are simply too saturated to hear the signal beneath the noise.
And without signal, there is no real position.
Only imitation with better fonts.
So before you rewrite your website,
before you change your offer,
before you assume you’ve lost your edge —
Ask yourself:
When was the last time I was far enough away from everyone else’s opinion to hear my own?
When was the last time I got clean?
Because clarity is not always something you think your way into.
Sometimes it is something you recover when the interference stops.
And that recovery?
That is where powerful positioning begins.