Why bragging is difficult...and other meanderings

Yesterday, I shared a post about one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to interviewing business analysts.

I wrote:

Overall, most business analysts I work with tend to be entirely too humble. We tend to use “we” instead of “I” when it comes to celebrating success and “I” instead of “we” when taking responsibility for failures. This means we over-apologize when things go wrong and under-sell ourselves when things go right.

This post inspired a lot of discussion that prompted me to reflect why bragging about ourselves is so incredibly difficult.

One point made by Eirik Netland was that humbleness, or humility, is a virtue. And in the discussion, we worked through clarifying what was actually "too" humble or "too" prideful.

For sure, an excessive focus on self can actually have negative consequences for your career and limit your experience of life.

But there is a danger in focusing on the negative aspects of a quality like pride, or even shifting to label it as arrogance. This messaging reinforces the already pervasive cultural conditioning that presses us to internalize the belief that ANY sense of pride, or ANY amount of bragging, is a bad thing.

That we are somehow a bad person if we sell ourselves too much.

As a result, we sell ourselves too little, our contributions go unnoticed, and our work is under-valued. This means we are actually less able to make a contribution to the world, as the need for our skills is not seen and supported by others. We find ourselves swimming upstream instead of running with the current.

These messages are pervasive in just about every area of our lives. Here are some common expressions that many of us heard in childhood:

• Don't tell anyone your wishes (goals), or they won't come true.
• Don't be too big for your britches.
• And my not-so favorite: You get what you get and don't throw a fit.

The cultural conditioning runs so deep, telling us it's not safe to ask for what we want and expand and grow more than those around us, let alone tell people about it.

There is no quick solution for this. I've been actively participating in some form of mindset coaching for the last 8 years, and while my thinking has completely transformed - which allows me to actively sell our offerings at Bridging the Gap, speak on stages, and share content freely (and visibly) - I still deal with the impact of limiting mindsets each and every day.

More recently, I've shifted my focus to therapy, including EMDR, nervous system work, and ceremony. I also use tools like meditation, energy work, crystals, and essential oils to shift my internal state.

Regardless of the modality, the goal is the same - counteract the cultural conditioning that has us believing untruths at a deep, subconscious and often unconscious level, but that most certainly impacts us in a conscious, practical way.

I'm curious to read what you think. Have you considered the role cultural conditioning plays in how you show up in your career? What modalities have you found support you in accessing your truth beyond the conditioning?