I care what people think.

Yaya
2 min readApr 13, 2024

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“I like your smile”, and I instinctively stop smiling.

I used to document my learning progress on LinkedIn until a colleague told me that I post on LinkedIn like it were Twitter, and I haven’t posted anything on there since. Even when I complete certifications, I just update my profile; I don’t share it on my feed.

I struggle with visibility. I used to believe you should just know someone is smart, or more like, you should always keep an open mind. You want to know how well someone is learned? Engage in a conversation with them and give them time to open up to you… (I just started laughing because this paragraph is bull and nowhere is this applicable).

Anyway, back to real talk, I have a knack of doing the opposite, and in the deepest recesses of my mind, I think I am simply not giving you the pleasure, meanwhile in actual sense, I am hurting myself.

How else do you grow if you don’t show how far you’ve come and the steps you are currently taking? How would you know if you haven’t skipped a couple of steps which is making you struggle with something, if you do not communicate? There are different perspectives to things and if you share yours, others might see and learn from it, encourage you and/or educate you on what else you should try. I like to know stuff, no? And to know more, I have to talk about what I already know, so that it creates an avenue where I see other posts related to what I am currently learning, which provides me more insight, yes?

It might feel performative but we have no choice. We have to be able to prove that we are worth taking a chance on. It’s as simple as buying an item because you can see and have been informed of how it can serve you as a consumer. Even if you are not currently looking for new roles or opportunities, when you write about your growth journey, it sticks with you longer, and you can go back to read through your summarised post to jog your memory for when you need to put that knowledge to use.

I know all of this, so why do I not adhere? Well, that is going to change now.

I’ll still care what people think but me wanting better for me should be priority.

Soar Yaya! (I call myself Yaya)

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