I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve quoted Brene Brown in my blogs and posts. 

My favourite quote is “what are you afraid people will see if they see the real you?”  Sorry if I’ve bored you to death with that one!  But it’s the first place I go when I’m reflecting on what might be underneath my resistance to doing ‘grown-up’ marketing and putting myself out there 😊.

Logically I know I can’t help people heal and live a heart-led and healthy life (which I feel is my purpose) if I don’t put myself ‘out there’ to be found.  And yet the resistance is often still there.

Reflecting on my most recent resistance revealed an interesting insight though.

I’m not actually afraid of what people might see anymore.  I’ve done enough ‘work’ on myself to accept the perfectly imperfect human being that I am.  I do my best in life and try and come from a place of love, compassion and empathy in whatever I do.  And I make mistakes.  We all do, we are human.  So showing people the real me is no longer an issue. 

So what was causing the resistance to putting myself out there?

Everyone has their own perspective on life depending on their history, memories, values and beliefs.  I am open-minded to others’ opinions and try and reflect on what I can learn from someone’s opinion, especially if it’s radically different to mine.

I believe the more we learn the less we know and if we think we know it all, we most definitely don’t!  But most importantly, I can still respect someone if their opinion is different to mine.

But I’m only too aware that not everyone will respect my opinion, in the “wonderful” world of social media!  I’m only too aware that some people feel the need to tell you that you’re wrong, in no uncertain terms, and it is really important to them do that in a public forum from their ‘keyboard warrior’ position of power!

So my conclusion to what was causing the resistance to doing ‘grown-up’ marketing was questioning whether I was resilient enough to deal with the keyboard warriors and the negative projections that would no doubt come my way. 

Was I resilient enough to allow those projections to bounce off me, recognising that those opinions were just based on a different perspective and were nothing to do with me, my story and my experiences?

Was I humble enough to accept that we all have blind spots and some of that feedback might actually be useful for me to take on board and adjust my approach or shift my opinion on something?

Was I going to fully practice what I preach and allow myself to feel and release whatever emotions arose in me as a result of negative feedback so that I could come back into my heart and listen to my intuition.

And the answer is yes.  It’s a slightly tentative yes, but it’s a yes because it’s another reason to practice what I preach and push myself out of my comfort zone because how will the right people find me if I don’t?

With love as always.

Sarah xx