Look On The Bright Side

51: How To Value Yourself Beyond Social Media

March 26, 2020 Jenell B. Stewart | Award Winning Editor| Educate, Empower and Engage
Look On The Bright Side
51: How To Value Yourself Beyond Social Media
Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to the 4th and final episode in my Cultivating Your Value theme. If you missed the first 3 episodes, go here to start listening to the first episode n the series 

Today we are discussing how to value yourself beyond social media. We live in a world where people are excited about how they look online and are easily impacted by social media numbers, likes, comments and views (or the lack thereof). Is it more important to have more value online than you do offline?


REFERENCES

  • Shownotes (here)
  • I Know My Value Worksheet Freebie (here)
  • Get On Their Radar Prep School (apply here) - if you are accepted to the prep school, you will be sent the details on how to enroll for FREE. I'm accepting applications for a limited time so apply right away. This training is for those with the heart, the talent, and the passion to win. This really isn’t for someone who’s lurking behind the scenes living in fear. During our working group you will be putting my strategies into action. Thus the application is mandatory.
  • Missed my "Start Before Your Ready Series?" (listen here)

Have A Question or Comment? Email me at podcast@jenellbstewart.com

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speaker 0:   0:00
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the general. Be sore podcast. I am your host and I'll be Stuart and award winning business coach, keynote speaker and content creator. The Gin L. B. Stuart podcast is designed to educate and power and engage. My goal is to have you feeling uplifted, inspired and empowered after you listen to each episode. Welcome to Episode 51. In today's episode, we are bringing to a close my cultivating your value. Siri's. If you have missed this entire series, you're not familiar with Siri's episodes 48 49 50 and this one Episode 51 are all a part of my cultivating your value. Siri's where I'm teaching you how to recognize the value that you have and to believe in yourself. So if you've missed some of the episodes in this series, definitely go ahead and listen to Episode 48 49 50 before you listen to this one. But if you're all caught up and you're on track, or maybe you don't want to listen to the others, and you just want to learn about social media and who just want to get some advice on how to value yourself beyond social media because that is something that you're going through. Then, of course, you can start here. So we live in a world where people are quick to judge others and value them based on perception rather than reality. So what I perceive your life to be like based on what, based off of what you share with me on social media is how I am going to judge you. And I mean, I guess it kind of makes sense because I can only assume that this is how you are if this is what you show me, right, So people believe that there's more value in how you are portraying yourself versus what may be the real you if they were to get to know you right? There are a lot of people that lead double lives, and you may be one of them, and you may know someone who is the way that they show themselves to be on social media is not who they are in person. I would personally say that I tend to showcase myself exactly as I am on social media in real life. Or should I say that differently the way that I am in real life is how I pictured myself on social media. So I don't only talk about the good things but also talk about the bad things. I've talked about my issues with my weight and how I've gone up and down and all my social media page healthy. Jen L. I spent a lot of time there creating an atmosphere of authenticity so you can see that I'm losing weight and it's hard. I'm losing way and I'm putting in the work. I'm not acting like this is something that is super easy for me. But when I go up and when I go down and I have setbacks and when I'm winning, I share all of those things. I also talked about this here on my podcast. Additionally, I've discussed my mental health concerns or my mental health progress, I should say, with parenting and how I had such a horrible time managing my emotions and my interactions with one of my Children that I needed to seek therapy. And I talk about that very candidly on here. A swell in a series of podcasts episodes about my mental health and about therapy, and I did the same on social media. Um, same thing with my business in my career. I talk about this very openly, and, um, I do my best to let everyone of you who are a part of my audience, namely my loves, to know exactly who I am. I will say, though I'm not always 100% ready. Tiu, show it when it's happening. So maybe there is a little bit of lack of authenticity there, because in the moments when I'm screaming my head off at one of my Children, I'm not necessarily showing that. But after I sought therapy, got help and, um was able to get on the road of recovery. I then shared that this is how it was behaving. So it isn't necessarily in real time, but I definitely do go, you know, do my best to be as honest as possible and to share it in a way that you can feel my honesty. So there's that. But when you have people that believe that there's more value and how they package themselves on social media versus how they really are, it leads people to think that it's better to sell a perception versus a reality, and it also reinforces the fact that people don't value themselves as much as they should, regardless of their professional status or credentials or how many social media followers they have. It's really important for us to recognize that who we are as authentic people with authentic believes authentic voices should be valued and should be heard. I want you to think about how much value we put on what our social media looks like, and I want you to think about how important it is for us to do things that will continuously make our social media grow. Are these things that you would do in real life? Are these behaviors and actions that you would take in real life if, yes, awesome. But if no, I want you to take a second to think about that, that the value you put on how you showcase yourself on social media doesn't match the value you put on yourself in real life. If there is a disconnect between the two, then it means that you are actively seeking to build an identity online that you don't have. So you probably see pages where people act like they're so, um about it right there, so aggressive, and they may come across as this person is really gangsta. And this person is, you know, out there living that life, like they about that life. But in reality, they're not. They, they're they're just an Internet thug, right? Or on the other side of it, you have someone who acts like they're so perfect. Everything is so perfect in their life. They're buttoned up there, zipped up. They don't make any mistakes. Everything they do and say is absolutely perfect. Their life couldn't be better. But on the other side of the screen, that is not the truth. They're living in turmoil or whatever it may be. And then there's people that act like they are wealthy and they're not. There's people that act like they're so connected in the industry, and they're not. So the perception that you put on social media really should match what your life is like, and I totally get it. We don't want to share our dirty laundry. We don't want to be the person who is showcasing this miserable world. It is better, sometimes tohave an escape. I can totally understand that, but is your value based exclusively on your social media and to the point where you're beginning to feel that you're only valuable when you're on social media, so that if you don't have a following that's growing or getting good content engagement, then you have nothing to offer the world. Now I will say that there is some great things that can be discovered from sharing your value on social media, but this isn't the same as creating a false sense of self right. The perceptual power of social media has allowed people like me to position myself as an expert. But in many cases we don't always have the educational background to support what we're doing. We have experience, and in experience comes a lot of value, lots of value. But in some instances, and in some businesses, having great experience without the degree to back it up means nothing right. However, on social media, it means everything. So, for example, I grew my YouTube channel two over 150,000 subscribers over 15 million views. And, um, I have almost a 1,000,000 on Instagram between Instagram and Facebook and Twitter for natural hair and beauty. I don't have a degree in cosmetology. I don't have a license in cosmetology. I hardly even do hair at all. Like outside of like my family. When I was growing up, I didn't do hair at all. That wasn't something that I spent time doing. I didn't really care to do people's hair. I will say, like I remember at some point in high school and in college, my friends would ask me to do their hair, and occasionally I would. But outside of that, my little sister Jasmine, I would braid her hair. When I was a little kid and my own, I had no experience in how to teach people to take care of their hair. I had experience in my own hair, and I created this perception of you should love your hair because you see me loving my hair. The advice that I'm giving you is based off of my own experiences, and I'm hoping that you can take from this and you can learn. So there is this perception that she must be really knowledgeable because of the way she's explaining things, the consistency of the content that she makes the quality of the content that she makes and her own personal experience. I can see that what she's doing is working for her. And so I convey al you what she's saying. So thes air examples of how perception can actually work in many people's favor. But what I do recognize is that there are experts out there that do have cosmetology licenses and degrees and have, you know, their own salon and years of experience doing hair. And those people have yet to be discovered because they're not on a social media community. They haven't figured out how to properly position themselves to be heard. And in the communities that I am in, they can't tap into them because of prejudices from women who don't really believe that stylists can really help them. So it can be like a double edged sword, depending on how you position yourself in how you play your cards, right, right, So I want to ask you a few questions. Do you seek strong social media influence to be a valuable asset? Does your lack of social media participation minimize opportunities for you in your career? Have you found that when you assert yourself on social media to be this different type of person than you are. You find lots of validation in how people receive you. Should you depend on social media to shape your identity? Orna. So depending on how you enter those questions, those are all up to you. And it's a personal thing I want you to think about. But I do want to give you some ways that you can value yourself enough to authentically discover your impact and influence. Regardless of how many social media followers you have, how many likes you get on your pose, how many comments you get, how much abuse you get on your videos. I want us to recognize our value beyond that. Okay, so the first advice I want to give you is don't rely solely on social media to define your saint yourself worth. Take the same amount of time that you're using to build your online credibility and channel an equal strategic effort in your riel world. Balance is key, so use social media to build on enable your offline relevancy as well. How people experience your value in the online world must be the same, if not better in the real world. And to keep it all the way riel people will value you Maur if they can believe you are just as impressive of a person as you are online in person. The next thing I want to give you a number two is don't compare yourself to others. People who don't have a good sense of their own self worth 10 toe waste their time comparing themselves to others rather than focusing on how their unique talents can give them a competitive advantage. As such, whenever you compare yourself to others, you risk losing your identity and further minimizing your value. Instead of looking at how other people are branding themselves and trying to figure out how you conduce, do the same. Focus on spending your time developing the skill sets and characteristics that naturally lie within your uniqueness into roles and responsibilities that will allow your inherent talent to flourish. In essence, be original and create your own damn platform. And the third and final step is believe you can be more valuable. Many people give up on themselves rather than step back and evaluate the bigger picture. It's never too late to start over, regardless of the circumstances. It amazes me how many talented people focus more on selling other people's dreams rather than valuing themselves enough to sell and accomplish their own. Don't ever believe you can't be more valuable, and this is something that I experience a lot with my business with my members and the people that I coach. They often feel a cz, though, because they don't have the same size social media following as other influencers that they can't get to a place where brands will recognize them or see them or wanna work with, Um, But this is so not true. There's so much value in your experience, your content and your offline world, your family, your friends. You know things like that that you totally can make a way for yourself. And it's not to say that you can't look at someone else and see what they're doing and feel inspired. It's it's not the same as looking at what they're doing and then thinking that you you're not as valuable because you're not at the same level as they are. Don't do that to yourself. It is absolutely not worth you kill yourself doing doing that and everything. You d'oh be original right know that it's okay to be different. And even among those who know this to be true, if you have the courage to act upon it, I know so many people that are afraid to put themselves out there. They're afraid to try something new. But don't compromise your values nor settle for less than what your standards call for. No matter what you dio believe in what you stand for, put yourself to the test every single day. Hold on to your values and never allow social media to minimize who you are. Okay, loves. So we have come to the conclusion of my cultivating your value, Siri's. And in the next podcast episode when you hear from me again, we are going to be moving into a new theme called Imposter Syndrome. This is gonna be great, because I am going to be sharing with you how I deal with imposter syndrome like every day. Okay, and I'll probably be covering imposter syndrome for a couple of for a good amount of episodes just like this theme. So get excited and be ready because I know that this is going to be helpful to so many. Now I know you guys are gonna have a lot to say about this discussion, so I just cannot wait to hear what you say. I'm looking forward to reading your tweets. You can tweet me at Jen L B Stuart. I'm looking forward to seeing those shares on your instagram story. You can tag me at general be Stuart. And if those of us on Facebook, you can? Of course, I'm also on Facebook. You can also mention my page in your status update, which is at Jen L B Stuart. If you did not already, I would love for you to get the word out about my podcast. You can share it on any social media platform. Make sure you linked to it. And of course, if you haven't left me a review on Apple iTunes, I would love that as well. Reviews help other people when making a decision about what podcast they wanna listen to. So the more reviews I get, the better my podcast can rank. And of course, who doesn't want to elevate their brand? Of course. You know, I d'oh! And with that I hope you will have a great week. And as always, I love you for listening By