Trying in public

One of the biggest blocks I hear from clients and students is that they don't want to be "perceived." As in, "What if I talk to my Instagram story and that mean girl from college sees it?"

This is something I've experienced and worked through first-hand, which is why in today's episode I want to talk about trying in public. We'll talk about embarrassment, community spaces, experimentation and more. Can't wait to hear what you think!

Episode Transcript

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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Hi friend. Welcome back and genuinely thank you to everyone who emailed and Slacked and co\'e5mmented and texted about the first episode, I literally love you and really appreciate all of the words of affirmation because that just really gets me going. Now before we get into it, I have a very exciting announcement: the first week of January I am hosting three nights of planning and reflection and moodboarding and it's gonna be really fun. So I want to invite you to join me for VISION WEEK, a three night live event at the Pretty Decent Internet Caf\'e9. So January 4, 5 and 6 at 7 pm EST each night, we will come together on Zoom and talk about how we want to invest and regenerate our time, money and motivation or energy in this new year. This is not going to be one of those workshops where someone tells you to get your shit together \'97 it will be light it will be fun it will be honest, so sign up at {\field{\*\fldinst{HYPERLINK "http://prettydecent.org/"}}{\fldrslt \cf3 \ul \ulc3 \strokec3 prettydecent.org}} and we can hang out. And it will be recorded, and the recordings will available for probs about a week, so if you can't make it live, you can still RSVP. Cool? Okay, let's get into today's episode.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 In this episode, I want to talk about trying. More specifically, I wanna talk about trying in public \'97 putting yourself out there and allowing other people to see you trying.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 So when In think about trying, I immediately think of this phrase "trying too hard." I don't know what your high school culture was like, but in the social universe I existed in, there were very few things less desirable than looking like you were trying too hard. I remember once in 10th grade, I was hanging out with this group of boys and it was a period of my life where I was definitely trying to be cool, I wanted specific cool people to like me, I was tryna go the right parties and dress the right way and there was one of these boys, who basically just looked at me mid-sentence and was like "You're trying too hard, stop putting on a show." And it was that phase: Putting on a show that just \'97 well, it embarrassed the hell out of me.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 I don't know what he was trying to say or maybe even protect me from or maybe what he saw reflected in my behavior, something that was making him cringe, but when he said it I distinctly felt see through. I just felt so visible, I felt like my cover had been blown, and I felt like all of my effort had been wrong.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 So I carried that feeling with me for a really long time, and I've always been a very social person, I've always cared a lot about social dynamics. In my early life I thought this made me vain or vapid or silly, but once I got to college and started critically thinking I realized that it was actually just me a sociology nerd and a writer and a journalist and someone, as Tina Brown would say, someone with "observation greed."\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 But even still, with that language and understanding of maybe why I was the way that I was, the defense mechanism was still there. I'm still afraid of looking like I'm putting on a show, or like I'm trying too hard. And I think the reason I'm afraid of that is because I don't want to be embarrassed.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 When I first started Pretty Decent, it was a moodboard account on Instagram \'97 it was me trying to learn hand-doodling and graphic design maybe, it was me curating an aesthetic, brand identity, it was me spending a lot of time on Pinterest and a lot of time caring deeply about music, it was 2017 the year of CTRL and DAMN. and all of these incredible records that I was just obsessed with. And I was also coming out of college and a really intense social circle where everyone knows everyone and everything, and out of a relationship where I was really intensely critiqued. And I think I just really wanted to be myself somewhere.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Be my new self, maybe, my post-grad \'97 I wanted somewhere where wouldn't be judged or perceived in bad faith, and where I could try, safely, to make something or experiment.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 I wanted to try, I wanted to make friends \'97 actually some of now my closest Internet friends, specifically Lissa and Roxanne came from this era, because I had Instagram bots crawling and finding people who like I thought might like the same things as me. It was not great and my engagement rate is still trash because of it, but it worked because I made two friends so shoutout to them.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Anyways, the point of me telling you this story, both of these stories, is to I guess illustrate my experience and perception of trying. I went digging for some theory or research around trying, and I read some really philosophical stuff but what I'm interested in is not how we try or why we try, but how we cope with trying \'97 and how we cope with trying in front of people, which nowadays and for you all listening who I know many of you want to build creative digital businesses, means online.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 I want you to imagine trying to learn how to juggle. And maybe you already know how to juggle, in which case, trying to learn how to hula hoop or something. I just want you to imagine trying to learn something that is maybeee a little bit silly, no offense to jugglers where you're gonna drop things or mess up or fall over or whatever.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Now of course you can learn to juggle alone in your room without telling a single soul about it and you can pop out months later and impress everyone you know, but imagine you had two options: You could either walk outside onto a street where nobody knows you and try to juggle there or you could go live on Instagram right now and stream yourself trying to learn how to juggle. Which one would you prefer?\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Some of you might say online, I might say online at this point in my life. But there was a time where I thought the most embarrassing thing I could ever do was talk to my Instagram story. And so if you said outside or in a place where nobody knows me, I really get that because I used to be so embarassed.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 So that's really what I think we should talk about: Embarrassment. Now luckily for all of us, I finally found a copy of Bren\'e9 Brown's new book Atlas of the Heart, and in it she kind of decodes each feeling or experience we have as humans. This is what she says about embarrassment:\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 "Embarrassment is a fleeting feeling of self-conscious discomfort in response to a minor incident that was witnessed by others. When we feel embarrassed, we can feel exposed, flustered and clumsy." She writes that we often end up "responding to our embarrassment in nonthreatening ways like using humor, saying we're sorry, or sometimes moving on and not acknowledging it." And then later, this was my favorite part: "Those of us who are more sensitive about social norms and being accepted are more susceptible to embarrassment."\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Yeah, so needless to say, I am very sensitive to social norms. I don't like when people don't like me, I don't really like standing out, I like being someone that people like to be around, and I hate being someone who leaves the room and people make eyes to each other about. And so I end up being really susceptible to embarrassment.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Which has made trying on the Internet where almost anyone can see, really challenging.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Recently, I had a TikTok video of me talking for 3 minutes go, for my standards, relatively viral \'97 at the moment, it has around 73,000 views and over 300 comments. And it's not like it's an irrelevant video, it is a video that is specifically speaking to the type of person I work with: A creative thinker who wants the freedom of working for themselves but doesn't necessarily see themselves "build an empire" or scaling to 8 figures. The people that are in our membership, or even in our free Slack community, are mostly people who want to make enough money to support themselves and their families and be financially healthy but not at the expense of the quality and fulfillment of their life, right? Not at the expense of your time or energy, at least not all the time.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 So it's a good thing that this video got so many views and attracted so many of my people, but...I feel really weird about it. I feel perceived and idk visible and maybe even a little unsafe. And I definitely feel addicted to checking my notifications because I'm afraid if I stay away too long, the tides will turn and it'll hit the "wrong side of TikTok" and I'll start getting a bunch of mean comments.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 So idk. It's a weird feeling, and unlike the last episode, I don't have a theoretical understanding of why or how it feels this way, I just know that it does, it feels weird.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 But what I do have is a practice of self-compassion. And self-compassion in this context looks like me recognizing that I do feel discomfort at being seen by that many people. And it looks like affirming that this happens to plenty of regular people all the time, and that I'm certainly not alone in feeling this way. And it ends with me saying what I would say to a friend, which is that it's normal, and it's good, and it's evidence that your voice matters and is being heard by the people I make things for.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 And that's obviously an extreme example \'97 to be clear, I've been trying on the Internet for years without necessarily seeing that amount of reach. Your version of trying in public might be talking to your Instagram story for the first time, or writing a blog post or going out and playing your instrument on the street. However it is you have decided to try, I want to first congratulate you and also affirm that the more continue to try and let yourself be seen trying, the more you allow people to know you \'97 and the more you'll attract the people that get you. Because there are people that get you. Not everyone gets it. My best friend in I in college could sum up a new acquaintance in one sentence: She gets it, which just means we're hanging out with her again, or she doesn't really get it but we love her.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Not everyone's going to get it. Not everyone's going to think that what you're doing is cool, unfortunately. Some people are gonna see you trying and get genuinely triggered, it's going to mirror something in them that they don't want to see. And if you're trying on the Internet to build something or create a community of people, it might take a while for those numbers to start adding up. But it doesn't matter whether 5 people see your video or 500,000 video follow you overnight \'97 until you, until I, until all of us can get comfortable in the discomfort of being seen, trying is always going to take more energy than it necessarily needs to.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 QUICK TIPS FOR TRYING IN PUBLIC\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 I think that community helps. So trying in front of people doesn't necessarily need to mean trying in front the entire world. When you have a community that can provide a safer space as our member Samantha says, a safer space for exploration or thinking out loud or expressing your ideas, you can practice trying without as much concern about it ending up on the wrong person's for you page. Obviously I think Pretty Decent and our membership The Study is a really great place for you to do that because we do share a lot of the same values and we have created a community together that is genuinely I think really supportive and caring about one another, but you can find community in real life, in your own space, with close friends \'97 whatever you need.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Remember that everything can be an experiment, particularly online things \'97 each video you make for TikTok or slide post you share on Instagram, these are each tiny experiments made up of a whole lot of variables. Font size, posting time, sound vs no sound, lighting, whatever. So if something flops, that doesn't have to mean anything about who you are or what your effort is worth.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 And to that note, 3) I would say define your experiments. So before you try and put yourself out there, determine what you want to happen as a result. My #1 priority right now is growing my email list and growing our membership. So the fact that I posted that video and got two amazing new members into our membership is so cool to me, it's exactly why I decided to try. And so whether it's quantitative or money-related or not, consider what you want the results to be. And consider that even one new follower or new email subscriber is one more than you had before. And so let that be worth it.\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Alright friends, that's all I got for today. If you're listening to this and it's not January 4, 5 or 6th yet, definitely come RSVP for Vision Week, we're gonna spend three really fun nights making moodboards and planning and reflecting and journaling, so if you can make it please do and if you want to watch and can't come live, still RSVP because the recordings are gonna available for a whole week and so you'll still get to access the workbooks and\
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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Brene also writes that "The emergence of embarrassment coincides with the self-conscious ability to understand what others may be thinking of us." And of course that perfectly describes adolescence and being a teenager when for a lot of us with privilege, social safety and social acceptance and belonging are like the biggest deal in the world.\
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\cf0 Where does trying stop and doing begin? Do we ever stop trying?\
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Trying in public

Journaling prompts for creative business owners

Two Step