Ep #34: The 'Too Braggy' Fear and What I'm Doing About It

Episode Summary

Jenna shows you why it’s time to stop hiding away out of fear of appearing ‘too braggy’ and start showing up authentically and expressing your true self.

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Show Notes

As women, we have been taught for millennia that we shouldn’t stand out. We should stay small, stay quiet, be humble, and cater to everyone else before ourselves. As a result, there is a tendency for us to hold ourselves back and play ourselves down for fear of coming across as too full of ourselves or braggy. While we recognize that so much of this is patriarchal conditioning that we have internalized, we still don’t always take action to heal from and move beyond it.

Where are you feeling braggy in your life? What are the things in your life that in theory you should be proud of or want to share, yet you don’t? Whether it’s how educated you are, how well you did in corporate, or any of the privileges that you hold back from expressing, I want you to ask yourself: what would be possible for you if you were fully, audaciously, uninhibitedly showing up as yourself?

In this episode, I shatter one of my own glass ceilings and share what will be going on with me and my business in terms of new territory I’m wandering into, specifically around being perceived as being braggy. I encourage you to hold space for yourself and others, to support women when we see them trying, and I show you how to start showing up authentically without being afraid of being perceived as being braggy.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• What’s going on with my own personal transformation right now.

• The antithesis to us fully showing up as ourselves and expressing in the way we need to.

• Why community is so important.

• Some examples of where you might be hiding away from showing up authentically in your life.

• Why even though it can feel scary and vulnerable to show up as your true self, doing so can bring something greater than hiding away from it.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Full Episode Transcript:

I'm about to shatter one of my own glass ceilings. Do you want to come along for the ride? In this episode, I'm going to be sharing what will be going on with me in my business. Some new territory that I'm wandering into, specifically around the area of being perceived as braggy. I've been through it before. This is a new level now that I'm going through. And I want to invite you all in on this ride, because I know that it's something that touches each of us in different ways, and is probably affecting you in some way, right now. Let's talk about it.

You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach, and reformed over-analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.

Hey, my friends. Welcome back to The Uncommon Way. I am so happy you're here. Really, you have no idea how happy I am that you're here. I'm going to get a little personal on this episode, more so than usual, maybe. And it feels a little vulnerable right now, sitting here in my closet, totally protected with four walls all around me. But that is the point.

I don't mean the point is for us to bare all of our secrets and all of our fears with our audience, necessarily. Although if you want to, great. But what I mean, is that when there is something moving, when there is a transformation moving through us, it longs to be expressed. It longs to be made manifest.

It looks like evidence that people can see. It looks like something or it sounds like something, it becomes a tangible thing in the world. And so, I think it longs to be made manifest. And it also longs to be received within the universe.

When you are able to share with other humans, that sets wheels in motion, is what I'm trying to say. And so, the vulnerability is that first initiated impulse that drives you forward. And then, the beauty is that, especially in the kind of women-led networks that are popping up everywhere around the world, like this one, which I honor and love and respect so deeply, there's a feeling of safety for me, at least, within the vulnerability.

So, just knowing that I'm talking to you, and that the kind of person you are allows this expansion… It not only allows that expansion, right? It's almost like a magnet calling to the expansion. So, there's one sense of energy where it's coming out through you and pushing outwards.

And I know you all feel that. I know you all feel the nudge for something, in some direction, at this moment, right? There's something in you, there's some little voice that won't shut up, and is just kind of gently knocking at your door. Or, if it's been a while, maybe it's screaming loudly in your ear.

There is that, and there's that energy, that push from the inside out. But what I'm noticing, more and more, and I'm tapping into, is this other energetic, which is coming from the outside, and it's magnetizing more and more of us to speak our truth.

For instance, I have that energetic very strongly, for all of you. I am teasing that, I'm seducing that, out of you, so that the world becomes a much brighter and much more conscious and evolved place. I believe that so fully. That's absolutely my mission. That's why I'm in this, is so that the expression within us is no longer stifled.

What's going on with my personal transformation in the moment, is I have signed on with a new coach, entered a new mastermind. And this is something that I would love to do, just a complete episode on that, about how I make decisions of this sort.

Because I've been doing this so long in my thoughts, in my mind. It's actually not really my thoughts, but my feelings, right? And my beliefs about this are very precise at this point. But it is reflecting the impulse that was within me, the part of me that needed to be expressed, and then I basically found my home there. I attracted it to me; I attracted it into my sphere.

I know enough to move very, very quickly when I received that matched energy to the thing that I've been calling in. So, I moved very quickly. Made a powerful decision in my life, and it's taking me in a direction that feels a little scary.

Because here's what's going on, and this is really what I want to talk about today. I have felt very passionately for a very long time, about this tendency for women to hold themselves back, to tamp themselves down, specifically around this idea of feeling braggy.

We've been taught for centuries, for millennia really, that we shouldn't stand out. That we should cater to everybody else. That we should be humble. And that it was actually dangerous for us to stand out. That doing so, would be like that woman wouldn't be proper marriage material, right? She'd be a problem to handle. Right? It was dangerous for us. Literally, we were burned at the stake. Like I’ve said, we wouldn't get married, we wouldn't procreate; it was very dangerous for us to stand out.

And I think that goes with, this is something that we see throughout both the masculine and feminine. Men also, to a lesser degree but to some extent, there is a huge virtue placed on humility. And the way that translates, is that we're always checking ourselves, right? We're always checking ourselves to see, am I going too far? Is this inappropriate? Is this going to offend anybody else's sensibilities? Will this be perceived in a negative way?

I've done a lot of work on this. And it was very vulnerable for me to start, for instance, sharing the fact that my family and I do go to Europe for a month; that felt very braggy. It felt like, oh, la-di-da. Look at us. We have money and we have this freedom and we go live in these glamorous places once a year. It felt scary; it felt like I'd be judged.

I continued to do that, but my next level is through the visual sphere. So, while I'm talking, in certain contained areas, about things that before I never would have shared. For instance, being educated. Or, having done well in my career, before I came into this line of work. About, I don't know, things that come easily to me.

All of the things that I might have tried to control or manipulate, I'm getting better and better about speaking about and owning. Of course, this is so much of the work that I do with my clients, is helping them own their superpowers. And, there's room for more.

Because what I really don't do is, I don't show myself. You've seen my writing; you hear my voice. And there were very concrete reasons that I went off social media, that had nothing to do with visibility. And as I come back onto the visual sphere, as I start being seen, I'm noticing which pictures I select and which pictures I don't.

For instance, I don't give my social media manager pictures of myself in a bathing suit; there's one coming out soon. But there are things that I don't send her, right? And a lot of the ones that I do send her are like, how can I look the most approachable? I get that… I get that so often. I often ask people on a sales call, when they first find me, what led you to think that I might be the right coach for you? And many people say that I just seem approachable.

And so, I noticed myself filtering the information in this way. And that is really the antithesis of us fully showing up as ourselves, being fully uninhibited, and expressing in the way that we need to express. If we're all carbon copies of each other, then the universe halts, right?

As we are expressing this pulse of consciousness, that comes through each of us uniquely, our world is infinitely more beautiful and interesting and inspiring. And it creates opportunities for us to bump into things that we are either drawn towards or repelled by, that helps us clarify our desires and our positioning, and then inspires new ideas for us. And so, all of this is very necessary for a world that is in continual evolution, right?

If we all look the same, if we all think the same, we all dress the same, then the world progresses more slowly. And we've seen this throughout history. We saw long stretches, hundreds of years at a time, thousands of years at a time, where humanity stayed pretty much the same.

And then, we've seen this explosion that happens, and is happening, and is accelerating, as we all benefit from the work that others are doing in this realm, and then start to step our way into it ourselves. What I wanted to share is that for all of us, we have things in our background that would keep us from feeling safe to really show up absolutely, authentically as we are.

And for me, that could look like… Especially with relation to my body and my success. When I was younger, I think I've mentioned this before, my dad was older than other dads. And so, in the military, he was by default a higher rank and earning more money; because it is a meritocracy in some way. But basically, if you stay in long enough, you move up the ranks and you earn more money. So, by default, he was.

That set me apart; a few other things set me apart. And I spent so much of my energy as a child proving that I was just one of the gang. Proving that I was just like everyone else. That I wasn't going to be judging anybody. That I didn't look down on anyone because they had less money than me. I spent so much energy, and that has carried through in a lot of ways.

I honor it, of course. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing, to have had those conversations with myself about the fact that all humans are created equal, and I have nothing to do with my dad’s success. That I'm not any better or worse, based on these circumstances. And, I love that and I honor that part of me that does believe that is approachable.

Also, I don't love the part of me that tells me that I need to change who I am in order to be loved. Right? That's just bullshit. People will love me; people will hate me. And I might as well be who I am, in the middle. It's probably not going to change the percentage either way, no matter what I do. So, just be me.

I also think, that with women there's another layer. Which is the threat of sexual predators. Of feeling unsafe because of the dynamic that we've been brought up with. With fearing for our safety based on how we look or what attention we might attract.

And that was certainly my case. I grew up in Hawaii, among Polynesian and Asian ethnicities. I was a white girl who developed very early, was much taller, was wearing a bra, had curves long before anyone else did. I drew a lot of attention that I did not want and could not handle when I was that age.

Throughout life, I've, unfortunately, continued to have sexual assault and date rape, and I have a stalker. I was with a person; it was an abusive relationship. He has continued to seek me out and find me; I do have a restraining order. And so, it feels very scary even to talk about this right now. Because I have a fear that he'll hear it. And he'll know that I still think about him.

As I was thinking through this, I knew that what I want to share with all of you, and what I want to open up for all of you, is so much more important. So much greater than whatever thoughts I want him to think or not think; which I can't control anyway.

So, I do want to talk about this and how there are definite reasons for many of us, for not wanting to be fully visible, right? And definitely for not wanting to be braggy. It's one thing to be seen and to be visible within the kind of confines of what's appropriate in our culture, right? Like, oh, I'm the mom. It's safe for you to see me being an everyday mom in my yoga pants, with my son.

But it's not safe for you to see me lounging in this gorgeous, expensive bathing suit, in a villa in Santorini. Right? Laying there like some, I hear all the judgment coming out, but fill in the blank. Laying there like some privileged, I don't know, pampered person, and then being so full of herself that she's putting it on social media. Those are just all my thoughts right there. There you go. There you go; on a platter, all my thoughts. By the way, that's the image that I plan to use for this podcast. So, there you go.

For many, many of us women, there are very tangible things that we can point to in our lives about why we don't want to be seen or perceived as braggy, in any way that seems outside of what's acceptable. But I really, deeply, believe that even if we don't have that, all of it is there for us.

I personally believe that anything that is triggering from this life is really just a reflection of either past life events or our ancestral legacy, our genetic trauma that we have inherited. And so, I have had clients that have felt ashamed because they had extreme worries in a certain area. It wasn't necessarily visibility, although sometimes it is, but it was about speaking up, or whatever their thing was.

And they felt ashamed because the trauma, with a little t, that they could trace it back to felt so inconsequential compared to the big trauma, the big stories, that they hear out there. I believe so strongly that their sensation, the feeling, the nervous system reaction that they have in their body, is 100% real.

And it isn't necessarily from that trauma. I think that that trauma, what it does, is it opens up our mind to the sensation that's already there in our body. And so, it helps us bring awareness to it so that we can heal it. So, that we can see that it's there, and then we can work through it. And we have, at least, something tangible to process.

I don't want to go as far as to say these are gifts, because shitty things happen to really wonderful people; for I believe, sometimes pure chaos; no rhyme or reason. And also, anything that happens to us, we can transmute into a gift. That is the grace and the beauty of our humanity, is that anything can become our gold, no matter how much muck it came from in the first place.

Any little ehh that we feel, any little bit of ourselves that feels sticky in that way, is really just pointing us, I believe, to something much, much deeper, that could benefit from healing, right? That will help us be unbound. That will help us be lighter.

And I know so many entrepreneurs… because of the fact that entrepreneurship is the biggest personal development, spiritual journey that you could undergo. Especially for women, because it brings up every issue. Every issue that you thought you'd never have to deal with comes straight in front of you, into your face. And then, you have to work through it. Any one of those little things is the gold for you. It is the roadmap. It is the trail map.

What you will see in the next months is, well, a lot of it will be behind-the-scenes. So, you'll be seeing some social media pictures, but it's going to be happening behind-the-scenes. There is a big rebrand coming. And there is there is change. There is change happening. It will look very visual, but the visual is just the tip of the iceberg.

And I know that in doing this work, it will ripple down into much, much deeper work. More of my messaging. More of my philosophy. More of the direction that my business takes, because it always does.

And so, what I was saying, so many of my entrepreneur friends and I have this conversation, that even though entrepreneurship does have you bringing up all of these things, and it can feel like such an emotional roller coaster of the up-down, up-down, we would do it even if we weren't making any money, because of who it has made us.

I am so different than the woman of a year ago, or even God, how long was it now? Three years ago, I think, the first time I decided to take Dylan overseas. It felt so challenging for me to share that information with my audience at the time. And then, let alone talk about it while I was there.

I challenged myself to actually talk about it when I was there. And, that feels like a long time ago. I have come a long way since then. And, that's just one example of the many realms.

Where are you feeling braggy? What are the things in your life that, in theory, you should be proud of? Or, you should be wanting to share, and yet you don't? For some of us, we don't want to share how educated we are. We don't want to share how well we did in corporate. We don't want to share how we look, how sensual, how feminine we look, how sexy. Oh, that word, right? How sexy we look.

We don't want to share the things that come easily to us, because it's not fair for them to come easily. We don't want to share any of our privilege. We don't want to share any of the darker things either, that we've overcome. And we don't want to share how good we are at what we do, because it might be perceived as sounding full of ourselves.

And while we recognize that so much of this is just patriarchal bullshit that we have internalized, we still aren't always taking action on healing that and moving beyond it. I'd love for us all to hold space for one another. To really support women when we see them trying.

When we see them testing boundaries. When we see anything that kind of triggers us to just have that conversation with ourselves about why. To practice softening, and ask ourselves where in our own lives we're holding back because of the fear that we don't want to be like that.

And I'm not saying we have to become like that. What I'm saying, is that part of us that is being so productive is probably dialed up to ten. And we just need to dial it back down to two.

So, where are you feeling a little braggy about certain things in your life? And just what is the one area that you're also feeling a reciprocal pull to heal? And to start expressing what would be possible for you, if you were fully, audaciously, uninhibitedly, showing up as yourself? What would be possible for your business? What would be possible for your children to see? What lessons would they take from it?

What would be possible for your friends to see? What would be possible for your audience to see? What would be possible if the whole damn world, if all of us women just laid down the fucking armor and stepped out into the sunshine?

That is a lot of the work that I will personally be doing. First, within myself, with my coaching, and with the support of my mastermind sisters. And you will start seeing the seeds of that slowly made manifest and expressed.

And it's also the work that I encourage you to dip your toe into, dip your leg into, and fucking throw off the robes and just dive naked under. And, I am here to cheer you on. Collectively, there are so many women that are cheering you on.

This is why I know community to be so important. Every single one of my programs, it has to be community. If you are not tapping into the community, you are missing out. Because we need to flood our brains with evidence of the people that are there supporting us, that are cheering us on. Rather than, usually the one or two people or five people or a specific category of people, that our brain is spending so much time worrying about and focusing on.

Before we wrap up, I just want to make sure that we aren’t leaving this with a very heavy energy. Like this dire, we must do this very difficult thing. No. Let's just shift into, this is who we are. These things are going to come out because it is the natural progression of our expression. This is what is happening in our entrepreneurial journey.

We're showing up more and more. We're doing the work. And we're just kind of lightly flittering along on the breeze. Let's let this be. Yeah, there's going to be some ehh moments, but let's look at the overall trajectory for ourselves as kind of this light movement; it's a very natural movement, and almost like playful joie de vie. That's the overall carrying energy that is supporting our transformation.

Every once in a while, we run into a little bit of our conditioning, a little bit of a past trauma, a little bit of… I don't mean to laugh at past trauma, but I do, right? What if we bring in this playful energy, where it's like, “And that happened. But really, we've also had the last 30 years on top of that, of thinking about it and making meaning about it, and resisting and reacting.”

And while there are very serious problems in our world, and very serious inequities, that we can definitely have front and center in our vision, we can also carry, at the same time, this forward energy that's moving towards lightness.

I'll just give you an example of what I'm thinking right here. I'm thinking about how shocked I am, when I go back and watch movies or comedy skits from the 80s. Have you all ever done this? They are horrible. They're just so, so bad. The things that they're saying about different groups of people, and how the callous it can feel. You can watch that and feel so much judgment and heaviness.

But as time passes, it kind of also becomes like, “That shit was just crazy.” You almost have to bring in humor, because it's just so ridiculous, compared to where we are now. And that energy is available to us, even if we're not 40 years removed from the event.

It's a choice. And what this requires, is us becoming very comfortable with paradox, and being able to hold two beliefs and two perspectives at once. Yes, we are spiritual beings. And we are very, very grounded in the material world.

We are very much here with bodies that get aches and pains and have bills to pay and need to make sure we let the dog out to poo. Yes, there is a very serious work for us to do in the world. And there is a very serious work for us to do on ourselves and for our people. On the other hand, sometimes it's just not that big a deal. We need to laugh at the folly of humanity.

So, as you do the work uncovering where you feel braggy, where it's worthwhile for you to show up differently, and express differently. As you do that work, I just recommend that within it you also take time for humor and lightness. And that you ride those two energies, like a wave leading you to your destination. Because those impulses, those urges, are there for you. They're guiding you, and you can trust them.

This is the beauty of being able to wield your brain like a tool that serves the you, that works for you. On the one hand, yes, we can see it going towards a heavier energy, and we can love that, we can support it, we can boldly feel those feelings, and process them through and transmute them into something magical, like bold social change, or radical self-transformation.

And on the other hand, we can hold it lightly, so that we can ease the pressure, right? So, that we can make our steps easier. And I'll give you a personal example. Yes, there's a part of my brain that really wants to focus on the danger of this, on the negative thoughts about, what if the stalker sees this? And what will they think? And what will my peers think? What will my audience think?

Also, there's a side where, you know what? It's not that fucking big of a deal. Every time that I've moved into this energy, it's just been so helpful for me, and I've just seen it come true, over and over again. I remember when it felt so heavy and difficult to press ‘send’ on that post, or whatever the button was at the time on Facebook. To actually announce to the world that I was a coach and I was calling myself a coach and opening a coaching business. That felt so difficult.

And you know what? People were busy in their days and they didn't really care. Maybe if they did, they didn't really say anything. It didn't turn out to be that big of a deal.

When I started sharing about the lifestyle that I was leading, that also felt big. It didn't end up being that big. Here, on this very podcast, when I started sharing my woo, felt like a big deal. And, it really wasn't. Everyone was like, “Yes, of course. Of course, we all think that there's universal energy.” It felt like such a big thing at the time.

And so, being able to stretch your brain in one direction and the other, and give it what it needs, but also challenge it in different ways, is, I believe, the most powerful and potent of our human faculties. I'm not afraid of the darker emotions and the deeper triggering that's happening within my body. I can go there; I can sit with it; and I have.

I can process, up to a point, when it's time to shift into another side. To just say, “Okay, I see you there, and I'm driving the bus. We really want to focus on this.” And then I can get into, why do I want to do this? What difference will it make for me, when I can do this?

There's definitely the practical side, right? I will be living in the Mediterranean. I am at the water a lot. I will be in my bathing suit. It would be nice to not have to rearrange shots, and just to be able to take a shot right there, if I want to.

And the fact that I do love beautiful things and beautiful landscapes, and I do I stay at really amazing places when we travel. I love luxury hotels; I love that part of life. And I love nice clothes and buying pretty things. And I enjoy a lifestyle that not many people get to experience.

For a lot of the world's population, that's because they can't right now. But for a lot of other people, it's because they won't right now; they won't let themselves go there. Not saying that everybody wants to live in the Mediterranean. But everybody, I believe, especially you listening to this, everybody wants their thing. Everybody has that dream, that for some reason they're not living into fully.

And so, I also think about what it will be for me to be attracting more attention and why that's important. I want to attract attention. I want to get the message out there. I want more and more people to find this work and to benefit from this work and this perspective.

Also, I want to challenge myself to not be afraid of it. To welcome it in. To be able to hold it, and have the capacity to hold it. To have the capacity to shine, and to be okay with calling that in. I want to see more women in the world shining rather than dimming. I want more young women to grow up seeing that as normal and okay.

I want to completely flip this paradigm where a man and a woman will look at the same job posting, and a far greater percentage of men will apply to that, even if they don't meet all of the qualification. But the woman won't, unless she meets all of the qualifications. Because even then she feels like ‘who is she to go after that? To call that, claim that space.

I am claiming this space, this space right here. This clarity, this unusual way of doing business, this stepping into power in this way with this kind of alignment. This is my space. This is my world and my universe, and I am welcoming anybody in.

But I can't expect people who aren't there yet, to do all of the heavy lifting. I need to be willing to go out, to put myself in those rooms, to shine in those faces, to speak up and to be heard and recognized. It's scary, yes. And, we've done it before. We've all done it before.

We've all walked into the classroom as a new student. Or, we've challenged ourselves to take on the new job opportunity. Or, we've started businesses. We can do hard things. We can expand our capacity more and more and more. And so, wherever you are on your journey right now, I honor you. I honor everything that you have done up until this point, and everywhere you're going to go in the future. It's already there inside you.

As you keep doing this work, the expression will come out and it will seem like the time to do the next thing. And then you'll just do it. And then it will be done. You'll be holding out a hand, or being the example for the next person, just as you turn your eyes in a different direction and start thinking about your next step.

I am so grateful to be connected to each and every one of you. And to be in this together. Thank you so much for having my back.

If you want to tag me, or show me anytime that you are stretching your boundary, I'm at The Uncommon Way, everywhere. So, just tag me, DM me, and I will support you so fully. In that work you're doing, you are always safe with me to shine.

Hey, if you're a coach who wants true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business, and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.

Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn, from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to TheUncommonWay.com/schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach.

Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the Clarity First Strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit TheUncommonWay.com. See you next time.

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