You're not dodging visibility because you don't know how to do it.
In fact, you know exactly what you need to do and you're choosing not to do it.
All those excuses about not knowing the tech or not knowing what to say or even not having the confidence are just cover ups.
The real reason is that you don't know how to deal with the emotions around visibility.
Let me guess, this is how the cycle goes.
You resolve to be more visible and you decide how you're going to do it. You pick a time when you're going to do that video, publish that blog, write a post on your Facebook page.
Then when the time comes you find every excuse under the sun why you can't do that video, publish that blog or write that post. The cleaning the toilet is more attractive than communicating with the people who are supposed to book your services, time to get real about visibility issues.
Not having freak out about being seen and heard is not about learning how to be more visible. It's about learning to deal with the emotions when you want to be everything and anything but seen and heard.
These three habits will help you dealing with the freaked out feeling.
Practice benign vigilance
It's so important how we talk to ourselves and about ourselves. We use berating language on ourselves all the time without even realizing it.
I'm so silly.
Isn't this typical … (insert your own name).
What a dumb bitch you are.
Pay attention how you talk to yourself when you catch yourself out making a mistake. I bet you it happens more often than you would care to admit.
The effects of this type of self-talk will show up in your visibility challenges.
Benign vigilance is about catching yourself using this berating language and programming. Once you have the awareness, you can change the behavior.
Practice forgiveness
I know you're thinking, what does forgiveness have to do with visibility. I'm not talking about forgiving other people. I'm talking about forgiving yourself.
What does that look like?
This is the next step after practicing benign vigilance. You can take your visibility habits to the next level from benign vigilance by adding forgiveness to your flow.
When you catch yourself using negative language about a mistake you made, stop for a moment and forgive yourself.
It's OK to make mistakes, I'm human. (notice how I didn't the use "only human")
I forgive myself for making this mistake and I'm not dwelling on this.
I'm allowed to be imperfect and I'm OK with it.
Or something to this effect.
You'll probably resist the effort to forgive but the more you practice it, the more it becomes second nature.
Practice praising yourself
Lots of people write in their gratitude journal on a regular basis but not many have a praise journal or at least a practice to add praise to their journaling.
It doesn't get simpler than this. List as many things as you can that you did during the day that you're proud of. Even if it's the fact that you've had enough water to drink or that you managed to pull yourself up on and forgive for some of your goof-ups.
You can add it to your existing practice or if you don't journal regularly, I strongly encourage that you start.
If you're not a journaling type of person, you can do this as a "last thought" practice before you go to sleep.
You might think that these practices have nothing to do with visibility until you start working with them.
When you make them a regular thing in your life, you will see that those yucky emotions around being seen and heard are starting to clear up.
Why is that?
Because they slowly work on our ingrained, albeit false beliefs about our value and about our right to be seen and heard.
This is a practice I teach to all join in my Weaving Visibility circle and women are loving it. If you want to know how you can put these things into practice to help you overcome your visibility barriers, join my free network for women.
