Starting To Share Yourself On Social Media
Sharing yourself is at the heart of this work. In this episode we explore how to think about putting yourself out there on social media and beyond.
GIFT FOR YOU
If you’re a meditation teacher or coach who wants to create unique meditations people listen to over and over again, enroll in my free course Meditation Script Mastery
Music Credit: Nova by River Roots - https://www.youtube.com/riverroots
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to another episode of the Art and Business of Meditation podcast. I am Lou Redmond and I am excited to start to share with you today's theme and what's funny. And I'll let you in on some back end stuff. I was actually in process recording another episode of this podcast, an episode on creating my first meditation and telling you the story of how that came to be. And as I was telling this story, this part came up in my journey of getting out on social media. And as I started speaking it, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is its own episode. I need to pause while I was recording and I actually need to jump on a new track and record this episode because in relation to my own story and relation to you and how you are expressing yourself and your gifts in this world, I think this is an a more important episode to record first. And so we're going to be talking about today expressing yourself in the world, specifically in regards to social media and and in regards to the people that already know you as something else or they think they know you in one way. And so this is more story time in the sense that I find when hearing other people's stories, it really enlivens and inspires me. So I'm gonna throughout this podcast, as I already have, share with you stories of different times in my life that you might be able to draw inspiration or motivation from from. So let's jump back in time. 2015. You might have remembered my first episode that I shared my story and how I quit my job. And pretty much for that first year, year and a half, it was a real inward journey. It was a real metamorphosis time of having this crazy spiritual experience and trying to integrate it and figure out my life. And it was, it was a inward self explorative, a lot of reading, a lot of trying to understand more and I wasn't very outward focused at all. It was around May of 2016 that I decided to make a video and share a little bit about what had been going on with me and put it on Facebook. And in a nutshell, this spurred this coming out party, to give it a metaphor, that I was coming out to the world with what had happened to me and I was starting to express and share different ideas and things that I found helpful and things that felt true for me. And with that, understand that who I was speaking to are all the people that knew me in my old life, all the people that I would party with, all the friends I had for college and high school On Facebook or Instagram. It wasn't like I was speaking to my audience. And so that's the core lesson of why I want to share this with you today. Because the first step is coming out into the world. And often it's the people that know us, that we come out to and start expressing ourselves to now in that two things are going to happen. You're going to find people that you had not connected with in a long time or that are following you, but maybe you know from another person or you're just not super close with. And they're going to resonate. They're going to be like, wow, this person's doing something that really connects with me, and I can't believe it. And they're going to maybe send you a message. They're going to, you know, share with you. And you're going to build connections like that that you wouldn't have. And those are really fun and great and amazing. And this other thing is going to happen is that the people that think they know you, they might judge you. They might not get it. They might talk behind your back. And this might create a lot of fear and insecurity within. And I'm speaking this. I can speak it in an I statement, because this is what happened for me. I started sharing videos on Facebook, posts on Instagram, and was feeling this kind of conflict because so much of my audience was my old friends, and they didn't really align with where I was going in my life and in my spiritual journey. And with that, you might get discouraged and it might be really uncomfortable. And the purpose of this podcast episode is to encourage you to lean into that discomfort, whatever the medium is for you. Maybe it's Facebook, maybe it's Instagram, maybe it's YouTube, maybe it's a newsletter, and maybe you share it with your friends. I want you to move through that because that is the first step. The first step is moving through the people that know you. And even though they're not your ideal audience, most of them, that's the step that everyone takes. And it's going to help you get out of your own way so that you can start sharing more with other people. Now, you might be asking, how does this have to do with meditation? Well, with you bringing a uniqueness to your gifts and promoting yourself in some way. Practicing sharing your heart, sharing your truth in public, is only going to benefit you when you host a class or when you go out and speak to anyone. And online is a forum, of course, for you to connect, for you to Bring in clients for you to bring in opportunities. And it starts with simply the network that you have. So I say this for, again, to not get discouraged when you start doing it and no one cares because it's not the main audience. But it's by moving through that audience that you're going to get to the next stage where you start to find your people and you start to find the people that really are resonating with what you have to say. And it's okay that it's not great, or that you feel embarrassed, or you look back and really understand that it's through this that you grow. And it's okay if it's not the greatest content. It's okay if it's not the most profound wisdom that you're sharing. It's so funny for me to look back to old videos at around this time that I'm talking about 2016. It's terrible. Like, I'm yelling at people. Like, I'm literally yelling at people. And I did this thing on YouTube. I called it Lou Speaks Truth. And for a while, I made all my social media handles, Lou Speaks Truth. And I had this kind of quirky thing where I would say that I was dropping LST to see. We'll talk more about, you know, how. How spiritual ego can come in. But I was dropping LST on people, Lou Speaks Truth on People and sharing these videos. And if you scroll back, you go to my YouTube channel and you scroll all the way back to the first videos, you will see the episodes of Lou Speaks Truth, and you will see how ridiculous they are compared to current videos or how you hear me talk now. And I look back, there's a part of me that's like, I should just take these off. These are embarrassing. But no, I'm about really showing the whole journey. And there was some great things that I was speaking, by all means, but I had this energy of speaking that I was like, oh, my gosh, it's just. It's just yelling at people and it's funny and I can laugh at it and so will you. You'll be able to look back and say, you know what? I laugh at that content. Because it's not about the content we're talking about. We're talking about building the foundation for a lifelong expression. If you're listening to this podcast, I really hope that this is not something you're trying to do in five years and get rich and then go live on a beach somewhere. I don't think that that's you. I think that you want to make a real profound impact. You want to connect with your vocation. That is going to give you 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years of purpose that you can give your whole heart to. It's a long game. It is a long game. I've only been doing this for eight years, Only eight years. I know that I'm going to look back at this podcast and be like, probably laugh at it. You know, what was I doing? I'm just ranting on a story on social media. No one wants to hear this stuff. It's really just taking a frame of what can happen when you start sooner than later. As the famous Chinese proverb goes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is right now. And so I encourage you to start making your heart public in some ways to get out of your comfort zone. In the places where it's hardest, it's almost easier to go to a group of people that we don't know, because then we get to be this new, this person that we are, and they're not judging. They don't have the biases of who they think we are. And it's really. It's still us. It's still our projection. And while some of that might be true, it's another level to go into a group. Imagine doing this at your high school reunion and you give a talk on, like, meditation to your, you know, your high school class. They'll be like, what the hell? You know? You get what I'm trying to say? So let yourself start on Facebook, Instagram. Even if no one likes it, even if it feels embarrassed, I promise you that these habits of expressing yourself, of feeling discomfort, of pressing post, pressing publish, they're gonna build. They're gonna build, they're gonna compound. And in 10, 20, 30 years, you would have built those habits and have continued to expand your comfort zone, expand your expression, expand your speaking skills. And maybe for you, it's not speaking, maybe it's not video, maybe it's writing, maybe you draw things, maybe you're sharing guided meditation. So we're gonna. This story came from initially wanting to tell you the story of how I created my first guided meditation, which I will, but I want to keep in the timeline of my own journey. And this is what started with just getting out there on social media and sharing. And it was really rewarding and it was really fulfilling to honestly just have people receive what I shared. I feel like I was in a vacuum for a year and a half, dealing, working through my own stuff and just sharing it with the world was deeply powerful. So a little motivation for you to get out there to share in whatever medium and start now. Start sooner. And I say start now. Maybe you're still in a space where you're not ready. I'm sure I was not ready to do it in 2015 and it took its timing. So I trust the timing. But I also want to help you lean into trusting and finding the courage. To put yourself out there, feeling the fear going into your edge and sharing from there. It's a process of expansion and unfolding and you are enough each step of the way. So I always want to bring that back to you. So thanks so much for listening to today's episode and little rant on my journey of sharing myself on social media. Let me know if you end up looking at those old YouTube videos and to help you I want to I just finished up creating a course on meditation scripts and so to help you learn ways to express yourself and I'm imagining that meditation is a way that you want to express yourself. I want to share this course as a gift to you. It's called Meditation Script Mastery and it's going to help you create unique, powerful and evocative meditations that you can use to create new meditations, have new ideas for meditations, put them online, share them with clients to create transforming experiences, or just have fun and write and create and make it unique. Make help people vibe with you and connect with you in a way that they don't others because you have your unique art that you're bringing to it as we talked about last time. So to enroll for that free course go to meditation creators.thinkific.com Again meditation creators.thinkific.com the link should be below in the show notes and you can always send me an email or drop me a note if you want me to send you the link to that. It's a free course, seven lessons an hour long and it'll give you a jam packed nuggets of ideas and guidance to help you really lean into making meditation part of your self expression and your art. So hope you enjoy it and we'll chat again soon.