How To Turn Your Fear Of Showing Up Online  Into A Powerful Purpose

How To Turn Your Fear Of Showing Up Online Into A Powerful Purpose

I receive the same question all the time. How do I become more comfortable sharing my life’s work as I grow my digital presence? As a conscious business coach, I want to help you identify any narratives that block you. Women know this familiar story.
Women of color also know this history. Any woman who holds multiple identities knows this history.

The Fear Of Sharing Ourselves Begins With Young Women

It starts in adolescence, and social media enlarges the pressure, especially on young women. That pressure follows us into adulthood and behind the doors of our life’s work. But I want to help you get there by shifting the conversation and asking a different question.  You can turn your fear of showing up online into a powerful purpose.

How To Move Past The Fear Of Sharing Your Work on Social Media

  1. Let go of the idea that you will feel more comfortable. Shift the narrative by introducing a better question. You do not become more comfortable sharing yourself online. It will feel triggering and challenging every single time.
  2. Move from comfort to purpose and ask this question instead: how can I become more purposeful?
  3. Your purpose helps you live a more meaningful life. I’ve read so many self-help books and blogs and podcasts and this seems to be what everyone is looking for. Happiness and fulfillment through meaning.

When I dare to be powerful, to use my voice in the service of my vision. Then it matters less if I am afraid. 

-Audre Lorde

When you lack clarity and feel discomfort, shift your attention to your purpose.

Why do you want to grow an audience? Why do you want more followers? What is important for you to share with them? Focusing on comfort will confuse you and delay the next action. It knows how to convince you that your goals are insignificant, It will tell you don’t look great today. It needs a contender.

That contender is your purpose.

Why are you doing what you are doing? What is the greater impact you want to have?  For instance,  my goal is to help conscious women master the mindset + messaging + strategy they need to transform their digital business. I write that on post-it notes and put it everywhere. I have one on my desk. I have another one on my bathroom mirror. I have another one on the kitchen wall next to the stove. This is where I make coffee every morning and this reminder is essential.

Here are a few ways your purpose can serve you when self-doubt and fear set in:

  1. You remember that your greater mission is bigger than this moment of fear.
  2. You learn to use your face, voice, words towards your purpose. They are not there to look great.
  3. You can let go of your insecurities for a few minutes, knowing that your face is there to stand for something.
  4. You stop focusing on what you look like and start focusing on your greater message.

 

In conclusion, sharing your work online can help you grow your impact and income, but it can also bring up a lot of fears and self-doubt. This can increase as women. We live in a society that encourages us to choose perfection over our purpose. Instead of thinking about how to get more comfortable being yourself and sharing, it helps to think about how you can become more purposeful.

This purpose can support you when you feel afraid. Your purpose supports you during those bad hair days during the quarantine. When you focus on purpose, you take the attention away from self-doubt and direct it towards your mission. It allows you to remember that one day of content is one moment towards a bigger vision. This is your invitation to reimagine sharing your work on social media in the face of fear. Can you allow the discomfort and move closer to a purpose” Can you ask yourself how you can become more purposeful as you share your work online?

Your purpose follows your intention.

 

 

Hello! I’m Uchechi, holistic life, and business design coach for intentional women entrepreneurs. I help you integrate the mindset, messaging, and methodology to elevate your income and impact with intention and ease.  My life’s calling is to give you the language to architect and design your desires.

How To Find Your Business Love Story & Why It Matters

Every intentional entrepreneur has a love story. This love lives at the intersection of why you do the work you do and the events that inspired your journey.
 
But often, you don’t see it this way. You forget about the love stories we do not talk about.
This love can live at the foundation of your life’s work.
Let me tell you a story.
 
This week, the world celebrated Valentine’s Day. We talked about the love of friends and family and the love of partners. Some of you felt like you could not share because you do not yet have a romantic partner
Others did not know what to do with a day that elevates one kind of love for others.
 
I also noticed a third love that we leave out of the conversation altogether.
 
This is the love story of your work. It is the why you do what you do. So many of you have trusted me with these stories. You did not see your work as a love story, but it is. And when you can learn to view it from this lens, you can shift the story you are telling about who, why, and what you serve.
 
The definition of love lives in these three words: care, trust, and belief. Love requires intention.  Think about when you started your journey. What inspired you to begin? Many of the women I work with have experienced loss. The story of loss led them to a new story of rediscovering themselves or healing themselves in the face of loss.
 
My story holds similar threads. When I was completing my last year of college, my younger brother died in a car accident. He was one of my greatest loves. We loved each other with the ease and constancy that I miss today. My brother encouraged me to be myself. He committed to loving me in all the ways I showed up in the world.
 
My journey to guide others towards liberatory love that is language began many years ago. I did not always see the connection. But now, I know.
 
This is a love story of another person (my brother) , but it is also a self-love story. I found myself on my knees and I did not know how to get up. Language showed me how to rise again. Language opened windows and doors that I felt closed to me.
 
The language said go this way. It healed me. It brought me back to life.
 
  • What if you saw your life’s work through the lens of love? What if you allowed yourself to remember back to the beginning? Why did you start? Who were you trying to guide in the first place? 
  • What problem are you trying to solve in the world?
  • Who needs this? When you first started, did you need this? Why?
I leave you with these questions and with a request. Love shows up in so many forms. It also reveals itself through where we place our attention and what we commit ourselves to.
 
Often, your life’s work is something you cannot imagine not doing. It is a vow you make to a way of living and being in the world.   Can you pay attention to it? Can you name the love that brought you here?
Improve Your Creativity By Understanding Your Creative Desires

Improve Your Creativity By Understanding Your Creative Desires

What do you desire?

Dear Creative,

Desire is the roadmap to finding out what you really want, how far you’ve actually come and where you want to go. What if the things you’ve always wanted have already come true?

I believe that our lives can change for the better when we ask the right questions. This week, my creative life changed with one question. What do you desire? This month, I’m exploring the word desire, as it applies to “creative desire.” I’ve been asking myself these questions:

  • What do you desire in your work?
  • What is it you want?
  • What’s one thing that could change everything for the better?

What if your creative desires have already come true?

For years, I’ve wanted this one thing: to become a full time, paid writer. Every year, I create vision boards with images of the writers I most admire. Many of them shaped my perspective as a writer, and some of them are my creative ancestors. Writing is not a dream. It is a way of life for me, something I do with or without payment.

My love of language started at a young age. My mother filled the library with books from around the world. I read Achebe, Baldwin, Dr. Angelou, and the late Toni Morrison. I read anything I could find anywhere and deep down I knew I wanted to do what these people did. Language has always made me and allowed me to discover myself. Language and what we do with it can create profound experiences. And I wanted to find a way to pay the bills, keep food on the table and stay off the street.

My mother often worried this would happen. I was so busy wanting it and imagining what it had to look like, that I almost missed the fact that I had made my wish come true. I am a paid writer, and I didn’t even realize it. Let me explain.

Acknowledging your creative desire allows you to improve your creativity and see how far you’ve come

I work in technology as a web designer. Some days I build websites. Some days I’m more focused on the user experience side, while other days I write website copy. For every project I’ve worked on over the past 10 years, I’ve written something.

  • I write client biographies.
  • I write the Call To Action on each button.
  • I write the Brand Story.
  • I usually write the About Us page. 4. And sometimes, a client shows up with no copy.
  • I start from scratch and I usually write something for every page on the website.
  • Last summer, I wrote my first script for a short film.

I also wrote the product description for the first green screen app in 2011.

I have always been a writer. It’s in my blood. It’s how I make sense of the world, of my work. But when it did not show up in a way I could recognize it, I forgot about it. I needed to remember this. I needed to remember that every project I work on starts with a story. And usually, I’m using a combination of writing, images, and design to tell that story. And I’m getting paid to do it. Now, I can tell my mom not to worry.

I hope you take the time to ask yourself these questions to help you improve your creativity:

  • What do I want?
  • What do I desire?
  • What part of this desire has already been fulfilled?

And when you receive the answer, be open to realizing that you may have already fulfilled your wish. You might need to find a new dream.

How did I miss this realization? I don’t know, but I can’t ignore it now. I did what many people told me I couldn’t do. Now, when they ask me what I do. I’ll say writer like I often do. But when the say “but how do you pay the bills.” I’ll say the same thing over and over again until they believe it as much as I do. Keep going dear creative. We all want to see your brilliance.

Love,

Your Future Self