Hi friend,
Important announcement: I’ve decided you need to get good at selfies.
Let me finish.
See—I’m good at my eyebrows, good at selfies, good at spinning a personal narrative, good at explaining my work to others, good at telling people what I want from them, good at telling you which problem I’m solving.
I know all of this about myself. And I am perfectly OK with communicating it out loud, succinctly, like I just did just now.
People hate selfies.
But I have this sneaking suspicion that those same people get annoyed when someone else gets promoted or snags the job just because they were "playing the game."
And to that, I say: you're boring.
If you don’t know how to frame your own image, how to set an intention for yourself, how to develop a strong opinion on how you want to be seen—professionally, romantically, visually, in writing, whatever—then how are you gonna sit there and get mad when people didn’t pick up on your Call-To-Action?
Self-image (including the art of the selfie) is not about being calculating, or manipulative. It is about being active instead of passive.
It’s about forming an opinion of yourself and what you bring to the table, and then knowing how to articulate that vision of yourself to others.
People aren’t mind-readers. Nobody has time to sit and craft your life story out of thin air in that first informal coffee meeting. Or date....
So, today, I urge you: get better at taking your own selfie. Get comfortable with it, too. You need to put your best narrative forward.
No one else can do it for you.
Now, go tag me in your latest selfie on Instagram. Or send me one back in reply to this email. I wanna see. What version of you are you presenting today?
Tangent: A boy I loved once sent me a very cute selfie via email. Of his face. It was 2013. I loved that email...
Anyway, on with your regularly scheduled programming.
Big love,
xxA