Let People Learn How Fabulous You Are! What’s in Your Way of Self-Promotion?

Posted on September 29, 2021 by Rachel Ostroy, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Sometimes my mouse hovers over the send button for what feels like minutes. I’ll let a draft of a LinkedIn post sit for months. Why is self-promotion so hard? If you feel this way too, keep reading. If not, good for you!

I hosted a conversation titled, “Why is Self-Promotion so Hard?” after attending a 5-day workshop called “Speak to Serve.” On the first day of the workshop, we were instructed we would be giving our talk on the 5th day, that we would be promoting it every day leading up to the last and that we would pick our topic RIGHT NOW! “Whatever comes to mind, that’s what your topic should be!”

As soon as I heard the word enroll, all I could think of was that I had to promote myself. Was there any way I could let people know I was having a conversation without putting it on social media and emailing them? If you come up with one let me know.

Yuck! Thus, my title was about self-promotion being hard. The irony is I signed up for the workshop to get better at promoting myself.

Some powerful women attended the discussion who I would have never thought struggled with self-promotion. The things that came up in the discussion were:

I hate it! It feels yucky!

I’m not articulate enough to share my thoughts.

I’m afraid of rejection.

I can’t do social media so I might as well give up!

Our inner dialogue is ridiculous — endlessly worried about being judged. The gamut of fears. Will we be seen as an imposter, a bad writer, a poor scheduler? We don’t want to take up too much space. We don’t want to be seen as being boastful to being seen as just plain old imperfect. These thoughts create a trap with no way out.

It’s a mental game and we can be the winner or the loser.

One way out of the trap was to think about it differently. During our discussion, a few people pointed out the perspective that reframed self-promotion to service-promotion. You have something to offer, a service others want and people need to learn of. Isn’t that why you are doing the work you are promoting? Don’t deprive everyone of what you have to offer.

Although the conversation was rich and full of useful information, the real learning came through the process of enrolling those participants in the first place. I had to promote myself to have this conversation about why self-promotion is so hard — HA! I kind of played a trick on myself. Maybe there is something to reverse psychology after all, especially when performed on yourself.

Here’s what I learned through the exercise: the more you do it the easier it is. The judgemental thoughts I feared gradually went out the window. I tried not to think twice and to just hit send!

“Who cares?” I kept saying to myself when I sent the email and made the LinkedIn posts. Who cares!

Many of us default to Judge Judy or assume other people have the same judgemental reaction. However, it’s an assumption. Do you judge every email that comes into your inbox? Or do you merely see them as people trying to generate business? Do you even open that email?

The beauty of the social media post and email is that you can just ignore or delete it!

If you were a door-to-door salesperson or making cold calls, you might experience more direct rejection. But because we never see or hear anyone’s delete click, it is very easy not to take it personally. And it isn’t personal! How many things do you delete just to clean out your inbox? Even things that sound interesting or are from friends!

I am so grateful for the participants that came. I’m not alone in my fear. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that only women showed up, and women over 40. Women seem to have a harder time than men, in particular women who didn’t grow up posting selfies from a young age.

The old me would say “Stay safe, stay small” and do nothing. New me says pretend you are a millennial and post the selfie and hit SEND. What the hell, what have I got to lose!