The fear...portraying yourself through words

I thought that blogging would contribute to curing my irrational fear of writing about myself. A bio field on a profile page sends a hot wave of discomfort over me. A mandatory bio field sends me over the edge! My current bio’s are on version 8 and have taken months to get to a stage where I am happy enough with them. My 'About' page for my blog remains unpublished. I just can’t seem to find the right words, which is somewhat ironic for an English Grad. And I find all this so much worse when writing about myself in the professional sense.

Over the last week I’ve spent a lot of time staring at a white box on my screen, the black flashing cursor only heightening my anxiety of the task in hand. With moving away I’ve had to revise my CV, write covering letters and feedback reports on how I have felt in my role. I found myself asking why do I get the fear at the prospect of writing about myself? I am confident in my career and successes, Senior Management always have positive feedback and I love what I do. So what is it?

Perhaps it is the worrier in me, imagining that I am not liked, a bit of a bragger or not thought the best person for a role because of how I have illustrated myself on paper. Ridiculous, because like I said, I know I am capable and my writing style is *quite good*. This is a perfect example!!…what I really want to type here are adjectives like brilliant, super or fantastic. Why didn’t I?...because to a reader I may not be. I’d rather someone read something and think, she is underselling herself, she is a fantastic writer, than think, a good writer – I guess but fantastic – I've read blogs written better.

I’m cringing at that statement but in order to face my fear I need to be openly honest about it. I am a very genuine person, what I say I mean. Writing about yourself in a professional sense has become much more complicated in my opinion as roles have dozens, if not hundreds of people applying for them. How do you make yourself stand out from the crowd without sounding cliché? No longer can you simply describe yourself as a hard-working, organised, team player. Even if you genuinely are. When describing myself with a plethora of descriptive words and phrases, even though I genuinely believe I am those things, it feels false. There are so many rules and books to read that if you took into account your CV would take years to write.

I have promised myself that after publishing this, I need to be more confident in the way that I illustrate myself on paper. Not to shy away from writing about achievements. Not to get caught up in the rules or worry that I am not putting myself across in the way that the reader may prefer. Something that applies to blogging too. So over the course of the next week I will finalise my resume for Canada and bravely hit publish on my About page…watch this space.

Apparently this is not a select fear but one many people come up against. Do you get the fear when writing a CV/Resume or a personal ‘About’ excerpt, what are your suggestions or tips for getting over this?

L x