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F ck Being Humble PDF

282 Pages·2021·4.36 MB·English
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Publishing Director Sarah Lavelle Commissioning Editor Susannah Otter Assistant Editor Stacey Cleworth Art Director and Designer Luke Bird Typesetter Jonathan Baker Head of Production Stephen Lang Production Controller Sinead Hering Published in 2020 by Quadrille, an imprint of Hardie Grant Publishing Quadrille 52–54 Southwark Street London SE1 1UN quadrille.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders. The moral rights of the author have been asserted. Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Text © Stefanie Sword-Williams, 2020 Design and layout © Quadrille 2020 eISBN 978 1 78713 514 7 To my family for empowering me with limitless self-belief, my friends and boyfriend for continuous unconditional support, and to anyone who has ever supported the platform with an open mind and appetite to grow. I couldn’t have done it without you all. CONTENTS TITLE PAGE COPYRIGHT PAGE INTRODUCTION 1. SELF-PROMOTION IS NOT A DIRTY WORD (it’s the defining factor of your success) 2. KNOWING WHAT YOU STAND FOR (working out what you want and crafting your profile towards it) 3. DON’T BE IN HIDING (make sure you’re present in all the right places) 4. THE POWER OF NETWORKING (and why it’s a game-changer when growing your career) 5. KNOWING YOUR SELF-WORTH (how to recognise and demonstrate what you bring to the table) 6. GETTING THE MONEY YOU WANT (how to get what you deserve) 7. CALM THE F*CK DOWN (why emotional intelligence is the secret component) 8. FAILURES MAKE YOU FUNNY (we all do it, here’s how to handle it when it happens) 9. DON’T LET LABELS LIMIT YOU (keep striving until you find what makes you truly happy) READING LIST N ot a saying you hear a lot, is it? Of course not. Until this very moment, you’ve spent your entire life being told that being humble is how you earn respect; and, while there is merit in the sentiment, trust me when I say it’s not quite that straightforward. You see, you can be the humblest person in the world, but if you’re not willing to be your own champion, you might be waiting a long while for someone to bow down and kiss those Stan Smiths of yours. Sadly, we live in a world where the word ‘self- promotion’ has acquired so many negative connotations that being associated with it is as embarrassing as getting a tattoo on your arse in Magaluf. Yuck. But what is it about putting ourselves out there that we’re really scared of? An acronym I’ve coined to summarise the paralysis we face is FOSS (Fear Of Sounding Stupid). This is the anxiety that the very way you describe yourself could be classed as cringeworthy or self-indulgent – or worse still, could be challenged for not reflecting who you really are. But while you’re busy obsessing over how the rest of the world perceives you (by the way, everyone else is doing exactly the same thing and isn’t thinking about you anyway), the real problem you should be facing is FOBG (Fear Of Being Generic). Now, I know that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well as FOSS, but just stick with me … FOBG is what should really be keeping you up at night, because you, my friend, are most likely doing everything you possibly can to not stand out – and you may not even realise it. You follow the rules, you communicate the way you think is expected of you, you’re modest, and you definitely don’t send a weekly roundup of your latest work. Instead, you sit in ‘Camp Generic’ with your Nando’s medium chicken and piri- piri salted chips. Don’t worry – it’s normal; we all do it. In fact, it’s too normal. There are many things that may be stopping you from self-promotion: concerns around sounding arrogant; a severe lack of confidence; and the one that suffocates people the most … you don’t know where to start and you feel too embarrassed to ask. But let me ask you a question: were you born a talking, cycling, cartwheeling adult? No, you were taught all of those things throughout childhood, or even as an adult. The truth is, we have never been trained in self- promotion, a skill that is integral to building a career, whatever your industry. Whether you’re in full-time employment, working as a freelancer or running your own business, failing to master this one skill can lead you down the common path towards a quarter or mid- life crisis of feeling undervalued, lost, and dissatisfied with where your career is going. So why now? What is it about the world we live in that means we have to start taking this a whole lot more seriously? Well, the recession has meant job security is a dying breed, and our rising expectations of flexibility and freedom mean we need to find a way to not only stand on our own two feet, but rise above everyone else who’s developing side hustles on their lunch breaks. With freelancers accounting for 77 million people globally and younger people wanting to become their own bosses sooner (the number of self- employed workers aged 16 to 24 has nearly doubled since 2001), the question is: Are we equipped to take on the real world? Our education has been focused on endowing us with knowledge, but not necessarily the soft skills we need to make it in our careers. According to LinkedIn’s 2019 Global Talent Trends report, with automation and AI reshaping the future of the workplace, it’s the personal attributes you can bring to a business that companies are looking at when recruiting: ‘82% of UK employers said that finding individuals with soft skills was more important than hiring those with “hard” skills such as a programming language with a limited shelf life.’ The gig economy may be growing, but unless your confidence in tackling self-promotion and asking for your worth is too, I’d wave goodbye to any thoughts you’ve had about building a thriving business or remotely working on a beach in South America. From not regularly updating your platforms to shying away from asking for referrals or sharing personal work, there is still a significant disconnect between the lives we want to lead and our ability to build and maintain them. We expect the pay rises, the recognition and the belief from others, but we don’t give people enough reason to provide them … and then we complain when all our stars don’t perfectly align. The good news is, you’re reading this book because you’ve finally recognised the importance of sorting

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