Simone Seol
Here for humans who want to human more humanely.
Categories
Business / Cold Pitching / Copywriting / Decolonization / Inspiration and Encouragement / Mental Health / Money / Personal Stuff / Philosophical-ish Musings / Sales / Social Justice
Get emails from Simone:
Can you be fierce without alienating people?
Questioner: I have a menacing canker in my mind this morning…. when speaking my truth, why do I get so damn confrontational sounding?!?! Is that a thing?
I love work that gets into the grit and grunt of life and made it a belief that no one else is ready to do this work so they won’t buy from me. When I aim to express why they need to start going deeper, I end up getting confrontational with these people. It feels like I’m in a battle and wondering if there is another way to be in your face raw without yielding a sword all the time?
Maybe other folks in your T&D course or orbit feel the same?
Simone: Can you tell me what exactly is wrong with confrontational and wielding a sword?
Questioner:
I don’t want people who follow me or receive my emails to feel like I’m coming at them. I’d like to confront without my system feeling like it’s gotta battle. If that makes sense. For example, “some of you aren’t doing the work, and it shows.” Was part of my last email talking about the collective shadow work needed for these times.
Simone: Ok let’s work on this particular shadow! The thing is, the world needs confrontations and battles. The world needs rawness. These are not failures or flaws or weaknesses to be perfected. They are part of the human experience. Putting aside problem solving for a minute, getting philosophical with me for a second… can you think of the VALUE and VIRTUE of things like going into battle, wielding a sword, being raw? Why they belong?
Questioner: Yes, I can see where there would be viable need for it. They belong for preservation of life, to fight for something that you believe will create a better world for others to exist, in hopeful harmony.
Simone: That’s right. Can you connect to the parts of you that stand up for that and give them appreciation and love and honoring? Once you do that, look at what you want to say. It’ll come out different.
Questioner: This makes a lot of sense. I stepped away today from an email with this in mind and came back to it. I naturally put my classy hider hat back on, but I’m becoming more and more aware of my emotions in this process.
Endless gratitude for your magic in the world. Thank you!!!
Simone: Also – what if you WERE just abrasive and aggressive? So what? Isn’t that genuinely a part of who you are?
Questioner: Gahhhhh – it’s totally a part of me. I get spicy and passionate about certain topics… there’s some layers beneath it all that hold me back. And my phrase for 2025 is “fuck it” my plant ally Nasturtium… so it’s time for me to get fired up and share what’s coming through.
Simone: If someone doesn’t love you at your fieriest and spiciest, raw and throwing swords, they’re probably not the people who’d be the MOST delighted to pay you and be radically changed by your work.
Questioner: Truth!! I’m going to lean into this. Thank you!!
Claim your ticket to the one-and-only live round of Truth or Dare.
Take your “Which one of the 4 types of hiders am I?” quiz, and get your free customized Mini Truth or Dare Challenge.
This is part of a Q&A series regarding the Mini Truth or Dare Challenge. Read the rest:
What if I don’t know what my offer is?
Can you be fierce without alienating people?
How do I get vulnerable without getting unsolicited coaching?
Why is my honesty getting crickets?
How do I get started writing when in limbo?
Is creative expression a “must”?
“I’m okay with my clients hating me for a while, but not my audience!”
“I don’t want to sell too much, I want to be cool!”
Unfiltered truth vs. “pain point marketing”
I’ve been silent. Help, give me a dare!
I’m being vulnerable… so why am I invisible?
Is creative expression a “must”?
Questioner: I sincerely ask, for myself and from myself, what even is the point of “putting it out there” if it’s just for me and I’m glad it exists? This is what I personally wrestle with.
It’s the “people want to hear your story” that perhaps doesn’t sit the way I would (or would I?) like it to, in me.
Why would we put in the time and effort and energy it takes to “put our thoughts out there” – IG / blogging / YT / a book or whatever – if it were just for ourselves?
That act in itself drains the life force out of me (that just came out, and is something I will sit with). The moment any focus is on “putting it out there”, my desire for it diminishes.
To do it for myself and for the pure joy of it, I love it, I do it, presently and in alive flow. No reason to do it other than the joy of doing it for the sake of life force moving through me and a complete surrender to that.
But the moment agenda is put to it by “hmmm, the world needs this, let me put it out there”… then it becomes something else. Something that feels forceful and out of alignment.
Not that I don’t believe I hold gifted beauty & genius ability to add wonder to this world that has never existed before, because I DO. But the “must put it out there, it’s needed” feels like it’s coming from a place and push and rush and… it’s hard to put into words.
IF I feel inspiration at a certain point to put something out there, that is different, and that flows good in me. But if it’s from a place of pushing myself to put it out there, it’s sticky.
Simone: This is… exactly what i’ve been doing and teaching forever. Whether others need it has nothing to do with me, and when that becomes a thing in my creative process, it no longer belongs to me.
The reason we put it out there is because, for some people — not all — it feels stifling and like a violation of our creative drive, almost, to just keep it to ourselves.
Creativity — again not for all but for many — demands to be expressed out loud, shared, to take up space in the world. if that feels like a “should” and not like liberation, that path is not for you. you should not be sharing
So even when you put it out there in the world for many to see, it’s ultimately not for them, either. It’s for liberating what your creative work wants to do in the world
Questioner: I see, and agree.
It’s evident to me how I’ve benefited from the public release of the creativity of others. How gorgeous, and how grateful I am.
Putting things “out there” has felt like a “should” more than it hasn’t, which explains my current resistance to putting anything out there. I can no longer exist in that force.
But there may also be a bit of “who really wants to see my work anyway, and what if nobody cares” (even though that doesn’t feel true in my body, could be other life / karmic), so I will sit in contemplation of this.
“It’s for liberating what your creative work wants to do in the world” – this moves me, because I begin to see my “creativity” as a being of its own, and feel a shift as I digest that.
Like: my creative work wants to do it’s “own thing / own work / own journey”, and I just ALLOW it through me by honoring it – more than anything.
Simone: YES YES YES! Now your work is to sift through which part of the reluctance to show up is honoring the true impulse of your creativity, and which part is smallness
Questioner: Thank you, beautiful Simone! I’ve always found the sand mandala process of Tibetan Monks to ring deeply true in the core of my being. It’s been the foundation of most of what I do.
To create for the pure present joy of it. Then to wipe it away with surrender and effortlessness.
They throw the rest of the sand into the nearest living stream to be swept into the ocean to bless the whole world.
Perhaps that is what the outward expression of our inner creativity is: sweeping our beautiful creations (ourselves in all facets and essence) “into the ocean”, to bless the whole world.
Dispersing of it in whichever way feels true.
Simone: That is so so beautiful!
Claim your ticket to the one-and-only live round of Truth or Dare.
Take your “Which one of the 4 types of hiders am I?” quiz, and get your free customized Mini Truth or Dare Challenge.
This is part of a Q&A series regarding the Mini Truth or Dare Challenge. Read the rest:
What if I don’t know what my offer is?
Can you be fierce without alienating people?
How do I get vulnerable without getting unsolicited coaching?
Why is my honesty getting crickets?
How do I get started writing when in limbo?
Is creative expression a “must”?
“I’m okay with my clients hating me for a while, but not my audience!”
“I don’t want to sell too much, I want to be cool!”
Unfiltered truth vs. “pain point marketing”
I’ve been silent. Help, give me a dare!
I’m being vulnerable… so why am I invisible?
“I’m okay with my clients hating me for a while, but not my audience!”
Questioner: I’m a classy hider according to the quiz. I’m truthful to the point that I know my folks hate me for a while but know it comes from a place of care and love but this doesn’t extend to the space outside of my community! Would being truthful as in the 20 truths challenge – help with this?
Simone: If you don’t behave the same way you do inside your community out there in your marketing, how would the people who love it find you?
Questioner: Exactly! That’s what that line got me thinking. I don’t know what’s stopping me
Simone: “I don’t say these things in my content, because i don’t want people to ____” Fill this out 5 times
Questioner: Okay. I don’t say these things in my content because I don’t want people
To think I’m rude
To feel I’m inconsiderate
To think that I don’t feel their struggles are real
To think that I don’t regard what they are going through
To hate me
The last one struck a nerve!
I’ve had people hate me for a while when I say things they need to know but don’t want to hear.. But then I’ve had the buffer of being their coach in a space they chose to be a part of. How do I be okay with not having the same situation if I do sound rude? That would alienate people.. So it’s like people hating me without knowing the intent. That feels not good ….
Simone: Your paying clients probably hate you for a while when you say things they need to hear… because you performed a version of yourself that doesn’t do that in your marketing, so it was a shock to them when they suddenly got that version of you.
You didn’t alienate enough people in your marketing. And you didn’t draw in enough people who love you BECAUSE you tell them what they need to hear… all because you didn’t TRUST your audience
Questioner: I see how I’ve been trying to be that ‘nice girl’ all through…
Simone: Put very bluntly, you’ve been lying (by omission) in your marketing to bait people into joining your program who then get mad at you because what they got wasn’t what they were promised.
Either stand by your approach and trust the right people to get your intention behind your marketing and appreciate it and want to hire you for it, OR change your approach if it’s not something you can stand behind.
Everything else is a complicated dance of deception that’ll leave you hiding and your clients getting mad at you..
Questioner: Yes, there’s a gap between who I am as a coach and teacher vs who I am as a person running this biz
Simone: When you close that gap you’ll make more money and have happier clients. Deciding to trust yourself and trust your people is a choice.
Questioner: How can I start.. Or where do I start?
Simone: Start saying what you would say if you trusted the right people to “get you”, and were ok with everyone else leaving.
Questioner: Thank you Simone. This was really needed. I joined TD not knowing why, but knowing I wanted to do it. But I’ll start the truths challenge even before. I can’t wait to close this gap!
Claim your ticket to the one-and-only live round of Truth or Dare.
Take your “Which one of the 4 types of hiders am I?” quiz, and get your free customized Mini Truth or Dare Challenge.
This is part of a Q&A series regarding the Mini Truth or Dare Challenge. Read the rest:
What if I don’t know what my offer is?
Can you be fierce without alienating people?
How do I get vulnerable without getting unsolicited coaching?
Why is my honesty getting crickets?
How do I get started writing when in limbo?
Is creative expression a “must”?
“I’m okay with my clients hating me for a while, but not my audience!”
“I don’t want to sell too much, I want to be cool!”
Unfiltered truth vs. “pain point marketing”
I’ve been silent. Help, give me a dare!
I’m being vulnerable… so why am I invisible?
I’m Simone Seol
I am here for humans who want to human more humanely.
Business / Cold Pitching / Copywriting / Decolonization / Inspiration and Encouragement / Mental Health / Money / Personal Stuff / Philosophical-ish Musings / Sales / Social Justice