Navigating Social Media: Staying True to My Values as a Life Coach
Welcome to my first blog. It’s a new venture for me, designed to help me find a way to communicate with the people I work with without having to compromise my values. You see, I hate social media when it comes to self-promotion and using it as a marketing tool.
When I first started coaching, I was told this was the way to connect with your customers and find your ideal client - so I tried it, but instead of getting the results I had hoped for, I developed a whole new sense of exposure that I found unsettled my inner peace, but it took me a while to understand why. The thing that interested me the most about this was that I carried on doing it.
Hoping that it would somehow become easier or my feelings would change, that I might suddenly feel more comfortable with it and get more creative with my content. I didn’t. I just got increasingly more uncomfortableand anxious, and then came to a standstill with a horrible sense of “maybe it’s just because you’re not good at it”. The negative self-talk felt loud and clear. So I sat down with this uncomfortable feeling and reflected on it. What was the truth in this situation? Was it that I am not good at it, or was I not good at it because I genuinely didn’t feel connected to it? Having reflected on this a lot, I realise that what I was doing was just not aligned with me and what I want to put out there in the world.
The whole instagram v reality became a battle for me. I am not a life coach because I have got it all sussed and my life is perfect. I have three children and a husband who all have their own needs and whose lives are so entwined with mine that it would be impossible to show up online without bringing them into my content, and here is the block I couldn’t get past. I did not want to post pictures of my family life. I have a high value of privacy and I want to protect that for my children too. How could I create the content for my work that people want to see without plastering us all over the web? I couldn’t, and that’s the fact. I could not be the authentic version of myself that I wanted to be online.
The reason why I have chosen this to talk about with you is that I feel that it is a great example of some of the traps we fall into and how coaching can help. I was told what I should be doing, so I did it. I felt uncomfortable and began to doubt my own capability and then fell into a negative headspace. What I actually needed was to sit with the discomfort for a bit and reflect on what is the truth of the situation.
Work out what my values associated with this are and are they feeling aligned with what is playing out? What is in my controlto do about this? As soon as I understood this, I felt so much more comfortable with my relationship with social media and began to look into the other areas to stay connected and visible and present with you all.
At the end of the day, it’s not about trying to fit into the mould; it’s about creating your own unique version that fits you.
