Do you toot your own horn? Or are you like many women – yes, it’s mostly women – who are reluctant to talk about their successes and talents? You probably don’t have any problem talking about the success of your loved ones. Why is it that we have that problem with ourselves?

This came up in a discussion with one of my clients about creating a personal brand. She felt uncomfortable about promoting herself on her blog, Facebook and Twitter. It was OK to talk about others and share their successes, but she downplayed her own. Why? She wasn’t ready to step into her own power.

How do you get beyond this? Here are a few ideas:

1. Pay attention to when you shy away from sharing your gifts or minimizing your talents in public, ie., with those who don’t know you. Awareness is the first step to changing.

2. Change your internal message about what you are doing. You have gifts that others don’t have. And, I know that you want to share those gifts. That’s why you started your quilt or fiber arts business. You need to share your successes so others can learn about you so that you are able to serve them. It’s really about providing a service to your customers, and you can’t do that if you hide your talents.

3. Start to put yourself – and your brand – out there in small ways. Take 30 minutes a day and look for ways to contribute. This could be by commenting on someone’s blog, writing your own blog post, sharing something on Twitter or your Facebook Fan page.

It gets easier as you go along, and the more people that know about you, the more people you can serve with your unique talents.

I’m sure you’ve read the following quote from Marianne Williamson. I love this quote and it’s pertinent to this discussion:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Please share your thoughts below.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2012 at 5:55 am and is filed under Business, Success, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.