RISE AND SHINE !!

As a woman who wants to impact people/community around her with her expertise and skill set, I have seen myself constantly facing obstacles that challenge my motivation to market myself effectively. I started thinking about this about a year back. As I started working on my own website I started researching and educating myself on a totally new paradigm.  I knew I was heading towards “Self Promotion”. The “difficult” part was not in composing the content of my website, but while working on it, I was constantly debating. The questions that bombarded me were ‘Why was self-promotion such a difficulty for me?’, ‘Why is this simple act of letting the world know about my very own accomplishments such a task for me?’

Soon, I started talking about this silly concern to my support-system-friends and mentors.  I was reaffirmed that it’s very natural that we associate self-promotion with a negative connotation as bragging. More so, because of all the personal experiences people have had with big sounding braggarts, who have no evidence to back up their talk.

With hours of introspection I recognized the only barrier I was dealing with was within my own mind. It was a deep-rooted notion of “bragging” that came from my childhood nurture, a very cultural component, where I grew up hearing from my mother “I shouldn't be the one praising my daughter, others (which included neighbors and aunts and extended family members) seeing her, should praise her”! I soon recognized my fear was that I did not want to be branded as a braggart! It’s so tough when you want to promote yourself, to let the world know what you are passionate about and how you are looking to add value to others’ life as well as yours.

Although I knew my website reflects who I am, and what I do and everything that I genuinely think is a part of my journey, I constantly felt I was bragging. Bragging is difficult, especially for women. We've been taught it's not a good thing to do, yet our male counterparts see no reason not to stand up and let everyone know where they add value. I hope this will be inspiration for other women who struggle with self-promotion. “You are not alone”!!

Most strangely the more I got involved in creating the website the more I felt an expansion within… a positive and feel-good factor. I could not deny that. I was discovering my small achievements and talking about them gave me such a joy of fulfillment!

Now that I have created my website, I am definitely one who wants to help spread the word that bragging or self-promotion will help you get to where you want to go next! So please don’t hesitate to talk about the great work that you are doing! I hope this will be an inspiration for others who struggle with self-promotion. Back up your work with enough evidence and shine in your own deserved glory! Does that mean you should exaggerate, put others down, and puff up your accomplishments to get ahead? No way! Focus on your own self! Look back at keep writing.

Please know, friends, that you are NOT bragging, when you are promoting yourself, you are just a savvy networker, who knows how to pave her path to make her dream come true!

So, below are some of the steps I documented for you, that really helped me to steer ahead to make my website. I sincerely hope this helps you too.

1. Make a list of your accomplishments including your skills and abilities. Doing this will confirm how talented you are and will get you motivated to build on your current successes.

2. Make it a regular habit of meeting with your boss, mentors and friends who love you for who you are and share your accomplishments. While they may know what you’ve done, they may know little about how you went about achieving it. So focus your communication on what it took to accomplish this successful outcome. This is how you demonstrate your value!

3. Start talking to people with a statement of what makes you unique and how it benefits others.

4. Write down the self-promotional activities that will lead to success. What you intend to do, to walk the talk, to provide evidence to your vision.

5.  Announce your goals to your friends and family or through social media, such as blog posts, Facebook postings, Linked-in updates or tweets. Sharing your goals will add a little supportive pressure to your marketing commitments.

6.Be the tortoise, not the hare and position yourself as the “go to” person for your area of expertise and share, share, share. Self-promotion is about building a long-term reputation for you. Establishing trust and respect from all, around you.

7.Just get started .

RISE AND SHINE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE !

The reason why I wrote this Blog is to tell all of you get going with self-promotion...

The reason for my website is to reach out to everyone…

To connect, in order to add value….

http://sanjuktadas.wix.com/sanjukta-das