Overcome Self-Promotion Shame With 3 Small Mental Shifts
Have you ever thought promoting yourself is cringy or in bad taste? This is for you.
Self-promotion has a lot of negative connotations.
Posting career achievements on Facebook? Vain and out-of-touch.
Promoting yourself on LinkedIn? Scary and icky.
How about posting on Twitter? Cringe.
Self-promotion has all these negative connotations — honestly, I get it.
Why self-promote in the first place?
I used to live in a world where self-promotion is a big no-no. After all, not long ago, people could get by by just putting their heads down and working well.
But times have changed.
The world is now saturated with information. The rise of social media gave every individual a voice, a weapon to compete for attention. And humans being humans, we did exactly that.
Nowadays, if you don’t promote yourself, people assume you have nothing worthwhile to say, and opportunities will fly by.
Fortune used to favor the bold. Now, fortune favors those who self-promote.
That’s simply the new rules of the game.
But what if you can’t do it?
Many of us don’t have a self-promoting bone in our bodies.
And I get it because I was one of those too. I used to think that posting about yourself is cringy. After all, no one in their right mind would possibly care.
But I was wrong.
Fortunately, this is just a matter of perspective. There are ways to look at self-promotion in a healthy, value-adding light.
3 Small Mental Shifts
The Principle of the Kind Audience and the Uncaring World
The people who like your stuff will be kind; the rest of the world won’t care.
One of the biggest objections I had before posting stuff on social media was the fear of being mocked.
We all have an innate fear of rejection — and unfortunately, posting stuff online does increase the chance of catching the wrong attention.
This comes from thinking that the world is inherently hostile.
But the more I’m into it, the more I realize that the world … doesn’t care.
And the best part is those who do care are the only ones who’ll notice you.
And because they’re people who actually want to see your stuff, more often than not, they’re likely to be a kind and encouraging audience.
So, instead of thinking that the world is hostile, think of it as uncaring — except for the few people that you want to talk to. They’ll be kind.
The Line Between Bragging and Sharing
You’re not bragging; you’re sharing value.
I used to think that you need to have a special kind of shamelessness to assume that people will like your posts — enough to read them, interact with them, and even share them.
I’d rather not post anything than post stuff that I’ll regret.
But it turns out it doesn’t have to be like that.
You have to find that line between bragging and sharing value. And that line is easy to find. You can use this simple question:
Who am I writing for?
- When you’re bragging, you’re writing only for yourself. This comes off as self-absorbed, and this is the kind of content that gets the most hate for good reason.
- When you’re sharing value, you’re thinking of the audience. This is the best kind of content because it’s for helping others — improving their lives somehow.
So, instead of thinking that self-promotion is braggy or unpleasant, consider it adding value.
The Principle of Practicing in Public
One of the easiest things to post about is simply what you learned.
Before I could post and build an audience, I had to be the best at something. After all, what else can I write about?
But if everybody only talked about what they knew, the internet wouldn’t be such an exciting place.
Most people take to the internet to learn something at their level.
When you want to learn audience-building, messages from multi-millionaires like Alex Hormozi probably wouldn’t fit you 100%.
Instead, you’ll look at fellow beginners, like that random guy on Medium.
If you’re starting your career, or if you think then
Instead of thinking, “I don’t have anything to post,” ask yourself, “What cool thing can I learn?”
Don’t Let Fear Hinder You From Your Potential
If you want to get ahead of the 1000s of other people in the same industry and line of work, one of the best things you can do is publish valuable things online.
But you can’t do that if you have an inherent fear of posting online.
In that case, we talked about three small mental shifts that you can do so that you can start putting your stuff out there:
- Your audience isn’t hostile, it’s uncaring at worst, and kind at best.
- Self-promotion is not braggy or unpleasant, it’s adding value to your audience’s lives.
- Instead of thinking, “I don’t have anything to post,” ask yourself, “What cool thing can I learn?”
Once you’ve internalized these shifts, self-promotion isn’t so scary and cringy.
