Celebrating Successes

<p>We are taught to be polite. Stay humble. Don’t brag.</p> <p>I think those are all important habits. Arrogance is a turnoff for most people. But we need to be confident, especially when we’re running a business. Where is that line? When is it okay to talk about yourself and when does it mean you’re being cocky if you do? With the current climate of social media and personal branding, self-promotion has become necessary. But how do you promote yourself without sounding like you’re bragging?</p> <p>It used to be that talking about yourself like, “Hey, look at me! Look at me!” people would think hmmm… you’re full of yourself. Now, if you don’t post about what you’re doing, it’s a missed marketing opportunity. It’s all a little too much.</p> <p>What do you do when something great happens and you want to share your excitement? How do you do it in a polite, humble, non-braggy way? Especially when you don’t want to resort to a passive aggressive “humble brag,” which is when you’re basically trying to draw attention to something you’re proud of by pretending to be self-deprecating about it. We see right through that.</p> <p>You don’t want to hint around and hope someone will ask you. At least I don’t – one of my pet peeves is when people hint at something instead of being direct about whatever it is they want to say. It bugs me so much that if I pick up on someone trying to get me to ask about something, I intentionally won’t. Just tell me what you want to tell me! I also don’t like the guessing game, so you know. “You’ll never guess what happened!” Nope. I won’t. Just tell me!</p> <p>But, my personal nuances aside, why is it so difficult to come out and say that you’re proud about something you’ve done? If you’ve accomplished a goal, landed a big client, been asked to participate in a cool project, or whatever it might be, don’t you want people to share in that happiness with you? Especially these days, when it’s been pretty bleak for so many, isn’t that the kind of thing we all want to hear? Don’t we want our fr