I’m a self employed entrepreneur and I make it my business to be liked. Being liked means I have happy clients – I am trusted, I have a good reputation and I am being referred to by others – this is good for my business – and ultimately, my brand.
However, the CRUCIAL thing is before I look for likes anywhere else is that –
I make sure that I like myself first.
Why do we all need to be liked?
Being liked is important to our personal and professional development as human beings. If we are liked it means we get our needs met, we get approved of, validated, regarded as important. It helps us grow our tribe or business so we build networks as well as a solid community of support around us.
If we are liked, we learn to like ourselves. If you have never learnt to like yourself, that is something you need to teach yourself.
I have a lot of Facebook friends, and get hundreds of ‘likes’ a day, and these likes make me feel happy and when I feel happy, I feel good. (The same applies for Snapchat friends or Instagram and Twitter Followers.)
It’s what internet marketers and social networking gurus are calling social proof or social influence. This is brilliant and very useful if you are an internet business or an entrepreneur that relies on this type of hype for your business sales and leads, but this need for personal social proof is now leaking into the mindsets of individuals.
Having high social proof is very good for my business as a Hypnotherapist and I make it my business to help individuals also grow their own personal self worth and self-likeability.
Being liked and told that we are interesting enough to be followed is always a nice validation and makes us feel good and the reason it makes us feel good is because we get a tiny hit of dopamine (the feel good chemical) each time that like, love or follow button gets pressed.
We all love feeling good, we like being approved of and validated – our brain links the likes to the feel good chemical as a rewarding experience and begins to crave more and more of those little dopamine hits.
Our brain enjoys the likeable attention, and wants to keep this attention going for as long as possible. However, it becomes a problem If you allow this type of attention to link to your personal system of validity because your brain will start to crave this attention in the form of social proof.
Social Proof is great for validating your business, but not your own self worth or self esteem.
What happens when we don’t get as many likes as we need?
If we have linked our likes to our personal system of validity, very quickly, our personal supply of dopamine can begin to dwindle, and our brain begins to search elsewhere for those feel-good comforting hits. For example in chocolate, food, coffee, alcohol, drugs, sex and in extreme cases self harm.
This becomes a problem when we blur the boundaries between professional social proof and personal social proof. This need can have detrimental effects on our own levels of self worth and self esteem.
As an entrepreneur and self employed marketer of my own brand, it is essential that I know how to like myself as a person as well as myself as a brand. So I replace my social proof data with something else much more personal and powerful.
My very own SELF WORTH like button:
When you discover your own self worth like button you know how to press your own like button first before putting yourself out there for others to like you too.
You can access your very own internal Self Worth like button and there are some strategies listed below that you can use.
We all have to be liked, especially by ourselves.
3 simple ways to access your own self worth like button
1) When you look in the mirror, tell yourself 3 things you like about yourself.
2) Tell yourself 3 more things about what other people like about you.
3) Download and go to sleep listening to the Learn to Love Yourself Meditation for 21 nights.
For more information about working with me privately visit thecotswoldpractice.com or online diptitait.com