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Struggling To Toot Your Own Horn?

Dealing with those awkward moments when you have to say nice things about yourself 🤯😬🤐

Top 3 terrifying Toot Your Horn Moments….

1 - Explaining what you do

2 - Promoting your own offers

3 - Publicly celebrating when you’ve achieved something awesome.

If that list has left you feeling nauseous, then this blog will help.

Here are 3 things I do to make Horn Tooting less agonizing:

#1 The Evidence Of Awesomeness

I have a database inside my Notion account (the thing I organise my whole life on) and it is filled with screenshots of kind words people have sent me. Whenever I start wondering ‘can I really say these nice things about myself because I might actually be more useless than a rubber cricket bat’, I can dive into the Evidence of Awesomeness folder to see the actual proof of my value that people have voluntarily sent me.

#2 Watch other people tooting

If you’re social scrolling anyway, you might as well get some benefit from it.

Whenever you spot someone tooting their own horn, I want you to pause, pay attention and notice:

How does that make you feel initially - you’re totally unfiltered instant response?
If you felt a little appalled by this flagrant self-congratulation, are you able to feel differently about that? Can you dig into why you might have reacted the way you did, and challenge that?
What would it take for you to feel comfortable doing this? Could you imagine sharing a similar post? What evidence would you need before you could make those kinds of claims? Or can you imagine a toned-down version you could feel better about?

Also notice when people Toot Their Horn semi-passively or vicariously - by sharing a client’s story, or getting their clients to post on social and tag them in.

Basically, you need to keep your eye out for horn-tooting, and learn to love it instead of loathe it, whilst knowing what your own limits are.

It’s totally fine if some practices continue to make your toes curl, and feel totally off-limits to you - that’s discernment.

#3 Go boasty, then tone it down

Stay with me because this is going to seem counter-intuitive, but it works.

Whenever you need to brag a little (trying to sell thing, celebrate a thing, or explain what it is you do, I want you to write the most boastilicious, even borderline obnoxious, version you possibly can.

Don’t worry. Nobody else will see it - except me if we work together, but I promise I won’t judge.

Now sit with it.

How much of what you’ve just written feels real to you?

What feels off about it?

Take a break.

Come back, and tone it down a little.

And just keep repeating the process until you’re comfortable.

You will end up with a stronger horn toot than if you start with a feeble mumble and try to ramp it up.