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 conversation with someone in our ICAP Members’ Studio. Beth felt uncomfortable about promoting herself. And she’s not alone.

When I ran a program called “When it absolutely, positively had to be done in 30 days,” most of the participants wanted help putting themselves out there. They felt a great deal of  discomfort about promoting themselves, whether that was in person, on the blog, Facebook, or Instagram.

It’s clearly okay to talk about others and share their successes, but you tend to downplay your own. Why? I think it is because you are not ready to step into your own power.

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

Be aware

Awareness is always the first stop to changing. Pay attention to when you shy away from sharing your gifts or minimizing your talents in public, i.e., with those who don’t know you. Ask yourself why and try to figure out what is stopping you. If it doesn’t come to you right way, try journaling your thoughts.

Challenge your inner voice

Something is clearly stopping you. Once you figure out the internal message you have, work to change it. And, yes, easier said than done.

You have gifts that others don’t have. And, I know that you want to share those gifts. That is why you started your creative business.

You need to share your successes so others can learn about you so that you are able to serve them.

It is really about providing a service to your customers, and you cannot do that if you hide your talents.

Start small

It’s definitely uncomfortable if you’ve shied away from promoting yourself in the past.

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 your Facebook business page or your Instagram page, pinning something to your Pinterest board.

It is about taking that first step. On my basement steps, I have a quote from Martin Luther King which says, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

You are building confidence with your skills. More importantly, you are building a connection with the people you can help.

Grow from there

Once you start small, you can take more steps to get the word out about you and your creative business. Start to challenge yourself to try something new or step out of your box.

For you that might be video. Today, nothing will make a difference more than video for creating a faster connection.

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

 

I am sure you have read the following quote from Marianne Williamson. I love this quote and it is 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.”

 

 

Tags: self, self-adequacy, self-adequate, self-promoting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2018 at 9:15 am and is filed under Self Care. 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.