Marketing is hard enough without sabotaging yourself with unhelpful self-talk. You say that you don’t like marketing? Change your self-talk!
What you say to yourself helps your ability to market your art or hurts your ability to market your art. Even if the thought you are thinking is a true thought, it may well not serve you to think it. Here are five thoughts, some of them “negative” and some of them “true but unhelpful,” and ten “reframes” that might serve you a lot better. Next week we’ll look at five more.
1. Unhelpful thought: “I hate marketing.”
Reframe/thought substitute: “I advocate for my work.”
Or perhaps: “I willingly market!”
2. Unhelpful thought: “I’m no good at marketing.”
Reframe/thought substitute: “I’m perfectly fine at marketing, if I put my mind to it.”
Or perhaps: “Marketing is a particular skill set and I can probably acquire those skills.”
3. Unhelpful thought: “Marketing means selling your soul to the devil.”
Reframe/thought substitute: “I can market in principled ways.”
Or perhaps: “Even righteous things have to be marketed in order to reach their audience.”
4. “If I start marketing I’ll never get any new art made.”
Reframe/thought substitute: “I can schedule for both.”
Or perhaps: “If I do my art first thing each day, I don’t have to worry.”
5. “I have no idea where to begin.”
Reframe/thought substitute: “Let me choose one simple marketing idea and give it a shot.”
Or perhaps: “It just amounts to making choices, exactly like making art.”
More next week!