Selling Yourself: The Unfiltered Truth About Your Digital Presence

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SELLING YOURSELF

As human nature matures beside technology, the need or almost hunger to promote, sell, or enhance the reality of oneself has become a second nature. From the elderly woman doom scrolling patiently in her local doctor’s office waiting room to the toothless bundle of joy still in the cradle listening to baby shark, everyone has a phone in their hand and the presence of the world behind the screen is felt more than ever today. This is the new age of Marketing.

2025! Doesn’t it sound like a made up number or a distant future in a sci-fi movie? Still settling into it if I'm being honest, however we are here baby!

It seems like every single soul on your timeline either lives classes above you, looks like a Marvel superhero, or makes WAAAAAAAYYYYYY more money than you…. or so it seems…

Now a days it’s so difficult to see through the filters that our fellow internet neighbors put in front of their work, their passions, and ultimately their lives. As judgey as I hope this doesn’t sound, the gag is we all judge each other in some form or fashion. This constant digital display is a form of personal Advertising.

Although we’d all like to think we are all saints and wouldn’t dare view another mortal under the harsh lights of judgement, in today's ever spinning revolving door of content and celebrity it's the easiest time in history to look in the mirror and feel incompetent because there are no filters staring back.

The Mirror: The Hardest Product to Sell

THE MIRROR

Arguably the hardest product to sell to self is self itself!… saw what I did there? No but really, in a world that feels like a marketplace, you can feel like just another number in the timeline of life & you can’t help but to feel the eyes on the back of your head sometimes. The one thing that no one talks about is the never ending battle of installing belief into oneself, making you believe in you. We prop ourselves up for the world’s judgement, which is often measured in 30 seconds or less and although every soul has access to the digital universe, not everyone is on it for display. Effective Marketing requires more than just presence.

The courage it takes to one layout your ideas and surgically prepare them in order to finally take action is only a portion of the uphill journey because after which you have to then watch what you’ve created and curate it to the level or fashion in which you were implying it to be perceived then once you dig your way out of revisions and editing your head off, you finally have to display it onto the world and hope that it is kind enough that day to acknowledge your message or vision, though often times…it doesn’t.

How are you supposed to feel when the world doesn’t see the vision you’ve painted as clearly or hears the magic in the sounds that you are weaving?

Why Not Everyone is Chasing the Spotlight

Why can’t everybody post their secret recipe or their favorite dance move? Why isn’t everybody posting their Beyoncé covers in the shower? It’s because not everyone is chasing to be heard or seen, not by the masses at least.

But for the many that place value on figures in the social media world, they too seek to be of value to on-lookers that stumble by them. This pursuit is a constant form of Advertising.

Which brings the next question, where do you go when the one place that is meant to provide validation gives you none?

The answer, I think…… is the mirror.

In a world of flashing lights, quick trendy edits, and something always being brand new. It’s so easy to look at yourself and feel inadequate to the filter-fied cookie cut world that everyone wants everyone else to believe that they’re living in.

It’s even easier to get lost and forget what is truly the point of this existence and I don’t claim to know what that point is… but I can fully recognize that isn’t hesitating to share your vision or dream in fear that the rest of the world won’t see it how you do, isn’t that the way it is anyway? No one can paint the canvas or push the strokes the way that da Vinci could, even if you were to have the full blueprint, the inarguable truth is that no one can tell your story like you.

And one thing that I think is even more true, even if it sounds corny, is no one can wear your skin like you can.

Tony Soprano once said “make sure it’s what you want because they don’t have to live with your commitments”

Which is so true, no one can tell you how to spend your time and we all wake up, put our pants on one leg at a time and decide where the next step leads.

Your True Mission: Beyond the Notifications

So if you choose to spend your time trying to mold a dream or breathe life into a vision until you’re walking in the days of that thought just remember no amount of likes, no amount of followers, and no amount of engagement time can measure the importance you carry just breathing. More truly, at the end of the day when you lay between your sheets the only way to rest your eyes with a clear conscience is by knowing that you are speaking, or promoting what you believe in, through social media or simply just living the life. Knowing that you are living your truth, takes balls. And it’s more than just posting a video or leaning towards a side less favorable. It’s about standing up and saying this is me and this is what I stand for. This is the ultimate Marketing message.

But not to be confusing, the point of this blog is to say the world already makes it hard enough to be noticed, or be acknowledged for the little or big achievements or goals that we set and conquer. Don’t make it harder by getting lost in the notification page chasing a number, a comment or even a follow. The number one mission on the thick yellow page size to do list that every entrepreneur and human being has, is to make sure you’re not trying to sell a hollow shell or a façade of a person but instead you use modern technology to display the hard-working, hand crafted ideas and goals that you’ve set for yourself and you do so because you only have one life. So make the most of it. This is where strategic Advertising plays a crucial role.

Sell yourself, not some image you see on the screen.

The Verdict from the Glass

To put a bow on it…

There is a poem by Jimmy Dean (yes, the sausage) that I never heard the name of that goes:

“As you struggle for self down the pathway of life And the world makes you king for a day Go to a mirror And take a look at yourself And see what that man has to say For it isn’t your mother, your father or wife Whose judgement of you, you must pass The one whose verdict means most in your life Is the one looking back from the glass So be true to yourself, nevermind all the rest Because you’re with you Clear up to the end & you’ve passed your most difficult dangerous task"