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This guest post is by Anne-Sophie Reinhardt of aMINDmedia.

We all know this dream: you’re walking down the street, wondering why everybody is laughing, snickering and pointing at you. You look down and notice you’re naked. The shame that washes over you is immeasurable. Everybody saw you. All of you. The parts you’re extremely insecure about, the parts that you’ve always tried to hide, and the parts you hate and would do anything to get rid of. You’re revealing it all.

Blogging tends to feel that way too.

You put yourself out there. You write from the heart. You try to get real. You’re basically repeating that nightmare, with the only difference being intentionally telling people to look.

People will read it. People will discuss it and they will criticize it.

Putting yourself out there makes you vulnerable. It makes you attackable. It’s like taking the defenses down in the biggest battle of your life. It often feels counterintuitive. However, once you become completely authentic, you’re blogging success is practically guaranteed.

There’s only one unknown barrier: your self image.

How hating yourself ruins your career

I hated my body, but most people—at least secretly—have something about themselves that they hate. So in the following discussion, feel free to substitute your secret hate for the word “body.”

Hating your body means having a lot of inhibitions. When you feel constraint by your physical appearance, writing about things in your life that aren’t perfect or may cause some controversy is brutal.

However, that’s exactly what readers want to read. They don’t want you to make them feel bad about themselves because you’re such a flawless human being and have your life all perfectly lined up. They want to read about your struggles, your challenges, weaknesses and maybe even your problems. That’s what makes you interesting and will keep readers returning to your site.

Being ashamed of your body is a telltale sign of having no self-confidence. Readers notice that right away. Sure, you can always fake confidence to a point, but when it’s real, it shines through every word you put on a piece of digital paper.

The time you spend worrying about the way you look, hating certain body parts or wishing your next diet will forever liberate you from these limiting thoughts is time you can use much more wisely. Just think of how many hours you waste that you could use proactively working on new blog posts, strategically planning guest posts or working on new ideas. The possibilities that will present themselves are endless and thrilling.

Tapping into your emotions when feeling insecure about yourself is almost impossible when you hate some aspect of yourself, but that is an integral part of successful blogging. People are moved by emotions and they want to read about them. Some of the most successful blog posts ever written focused on stirring up feelings in the readers in order to influence them to comment on and share your content.

Overall, your dislike for yourself hinders your blogging career in more ways than you can imagine—and I speak from personal experience.

How hating myself almost cost me my life … and how I saved myself

I was ten years old when I turned against myself and my body. The pressure of living with a brother who was mentally and physically abusing me finally broke me.

I had been too strong for too long, but now I needed relief and I found it in obsessing over my body. I blamed my body for everything: the beatings, the spitting, the screaming and the sheer terror of my brother’s presence.

I didn’t like a single thing about myself. My belly was too big, my thighs were disgusting, my face was fat, my legs and arms too short and my fingers round like sausages.

So, I tried to fix my life by fixing my body. Instead, I almost died.

I started a diet that quickly led into anorexia nervosa. I was miserable, depressed and hoped that shedding more weight would finally make me happy again. The insecurity was eating at me and was slowly but determinedly killing the once vibrant, creative and confident little girl.

I started retreating into myself, losing all my friends, too weak to engage in social activities. I sobbed on the way to my three– to four–hour workouts because I was so weak my feet were hardly carrying me.

I fainted several times because of malnutrition. I stole laxatives from my mom’s pharmacy. I told hundred of lies in order to protect my addiction. I tried to commit suicide in order to escape this disgusting body.

I went through nothing short of hell.

When I woke up after 14 years, it was almost too late. It was then that I faced an even bigger struggle than I had been fighting for most of my life: I needed to make peace with the body I was given.

Make peace with yourself

How did I make peace with myself?

I started to transform my thoughts from negative ones into purely positive ones.

I started to sit up straight and walk with a head held high. I started to strategically work with the mirror and only focus on the parts of my body I liked. I started to express my feelings in healthy ways instead of simply translating emotions into feeling fat. I started to readjust my values in life and put my body in perspective.

All of these actions helped me become more confident, and as a result, my writing improved drastically.

Now I am not ashamed of my emotions. Now I am not hiding my brilliance behind self-hatred. Now I am not shying away from spending hours upon hours in my office doing nothing but writing. Now I am not enveloped in a cloud of misery, but giddy with excitement about every day that I am given.

I wish I hadn’t wasted so much of my life by despising my natural self. I could have advanced in many areas of my work where I put a serious limit to what I could achieve by simply portraying how uncomfortable I really felt. However, now that I am in love with my body, I am ready to change the world with confidence, drive and a welcomed lack of limiting thoughts.

And the best thing is if I can do it, so can you. In the end only one thing matters: taking action.

If I was able to radically change my self image, you can write that epic blog post.

If I was able to overcome a deadly disorder, you can improve your craft.

If I can use my past for something good, you can put a dent in the world.

If I can embrace life with the excitement of a toddler getting a new toy, you can start following your dreams.

Don’t let your self image stop you from making your life and your work matter. Don’t give your poor self perception the power to determine your career. Don’t hide your greatness behind a layer of self-hatred and doubt and let your life’s work remain hidden for the rest of your life.

Take advantage of the freedom and the possibilities we have in this world, act upon them and by all means, let the world take a close look at the bright shining star you are.

Anne-Sophie Reinhardt is an anorexia survivor, body image expert and the owner of aMINDmedia. She empowers you to achieve a healthier and more successful life by returning to your true purpose and values.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Is Your Self-perception Killing Your Blog?

Facebook and CNN recently announced an ambitious partnership to boost America’s embarrassingly low voter turnout rate with a special “I Voted” app, which will broadcast users’ intent to vote and encourage their friends to follow suit. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely to make much of a difference, since the only known option to dramatically improve voting rates is completely unethical: threaten to publicize if users do not vote.

Clever political scientists have put every imaginable get-out-the-vote tactic through the experimental grinder, from call banks to TV advertisements, and found that shame, rather than persuasion or education, is the most effective way to get civic couch potatoes into the voting booth. Threatening punishment isn’t the only option available: carnivals and face-to-face canvassing work wonders to boost turnout, too. But, unless Facebook plans on throwing a block party for 130 million citizens, shaming users in their friends’ newsfeed is the only option available–and it’s unethical (and, probably illegal).

After experimentally testing countless get-out-the-vote tactics, Political Scientist’s Alan Gerber and Donald Green hit the jackpot: randomly sending letters (pictured below) that threatened to reveal who voted to their neighbors boosted turnout by an astonishing 8%, higher than same-day registration laws or vote-by-mail ballots (3%), direct mail (0.6%)and television (~0%).

The Facebook newsfeed is a ready-made weapon to implement Gerber and Green’s research, and we sketched a simple concept picture of what this might look like if Facebook decided to throw ethics out the window.

Both Facebook and other social networks have attempted soft peer pressure before: Facebook displayed a rolling count of users who publicize their vote and Foursquare gave a badge to those who checked into a booth on election day. Unfortunately, the perception of a voting norm has little influence on intent to vote, “Presenting the prevalence of college student voting in the last election resulted in a marginally significant increase in students’ intention to vote in the upcoming election,” wrote researcher Carroll Glynn.

Americans, however, are not averse to voting: in the late 19th century, presidential voting rates were consistently above 80% (and, above 90% in some states). Back in the day, elections were filled with carnivals and merriment. Professor Green found that modern day political carnivals can boost turnout a respectable 6.5%–but, at America’s 2008 voting rate of 61%, that’s still not even close to its past glory.

Kudos to Facebook and CNN for using their superpowers to increase civic engagement. But, they’re going to need an army of canvassers and the biggest block party on the planet to really make up for our political laziness.

Gary Beadle is een reality tv ster in het MTV programma Geordie Shore. Afgelopen week stelde hij aan zijn 500.000 Twitters volgers de volgende vraag: “How many people r doing the walk of shame hahahaha #wakeupwitharandom #awkwardtaxihome.” Het inspireerde zijn volgers om foto’s van hun One Nights Stands te posten, voorzien van de hashtag #bedofshame. Lees meer

Yes.

OK, that’s not much of a blog post, but it sums up what follows.

One of the main arguments for businesses not engaging in social media is that they don’t have time to do it.

Really?

You don’t have time to:

• Promote your business?
• Talk to your customers?
• Build relationships with new customers?
• Add value to your existing customer base?

Well, that’s a shame because if you did have time to do all of that, your business would be flying high, even in today’s economic climate.

You may think that you do enough face to face networking to bring in the new customers you need, so why bother with social media too?

Well, fair enough, you can find new customers that way, but what about looking after the ones you’ve already got?

We all know that it costs about 6 times more to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one, so surely it makes sense to ensure the service you’re providing keeps your existing customers happy.

I’m not just talking about saying a big ‘thank you’ when they buy from you, or sending the occasional newsletter. Social media gives your customers the opportunity to engage directly with you. In an instant you can make them aware of special offers and events through your Facebook Business Page or Twitter.

Social media is all about a two way conversation between you and your customers, adding value to your connection with them through hints, tips, offers and entertaining conversation. It’s all about relationship building.

If you’re still not convinced, here are some facts for you that might get you to change your mind:

• Social media users’ revenue grew at 19%, whereas non-social media users’ only grew at 6%
• The client base of social media users grew at 12%
• 61% of LinkedIn users gained a client through social media
• 35% of Facebook users gained a client
• 47% of blog owners gained a client
• 36% overall gained clients through a social network

(Source: The Business Success Team)

Are you beginning to see the bigger picture now?

I was always a sucker for Palm and HP’s little mobile operating system that couldn’t — for all its faults, webOS brought with it some features that put it ahead of the curve. It’s sort of a shame then that most webOS phones tended to suck in terms of execution.

The original Pre was light and plasticky, the Pre 2 didn’t improve enough, the Pixi was underpowered, the Veer was strangely small, and the Pre 3 died before it ever made it to our shores. There was another webOS device that was killed before it ever saw the light of day though, and a newly revealed video from design visualization firm Transparent House shows off what would have been HP’s next smartphone.

The first thing you’ll notice about the device in question (codenamed “WindsorNot”) is that it lacks the all-too-familiar QWERTY keyboard that had graced every other webOS phone until then. It doesn’t look entirely unlike a Pre 3 that went on a diet, and the folks at webOS Nation peg its sizable screen at around 3.6 inches — pretty generous considering Palm and HP’s track record.

What’s more, the WindsorNot bears a striking resemblance to a keyboard-less webOS device dubbed “Stingray” that appeared in the wild in April 2011. That original leaked image combined with the fact that marketing materials were already in the works means that the device was likely very close to its launch before HP decided to “discontinue operations for webOS devices” later that year. Interestingly enough, Transparent House posted the video nearly nine months ago, well after HP put an end to the production of webOS hardware.

Unlike other bits of webOS history like the 7-inch TouchPad, no Stringray/WindsorNot units have been seen out in the real world after the company’s mobile hardware ambitions were scuttled. While the chances of someone scrounging one up and posting a hands-on video aren’t zero, for now all we webOS fans can do is watch this video and think of what might have been.

Chief Executive Officer Terry Gou of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., otherwise known as Apple device manufacturer Foxconn, told customers on Monday to disregard Samsung’s recently-released Galaxy S III smartphone and wait for the upcoming iPhone 5 instead.

It's a shame Harvey Nichols doesn't sell adult underpants to go with its chic fashions. It seems customers might need the protection, given the urinary trouble the British retailer expects in reaction to its latest sale. Are these ads just cheap, mindless jokes? No, they are not! The company, perhaps inadvisably, claims to have thought deeply about the message it was sending. "The images in our advertising were designed to be a visual representation of a well-known phrase," a spokeswoman says. "During the production of the campaign, we researched the use of this expression in popular culture and social media and were satisfied that it is both commonplace and invariably used in a playful, inoffensive manner, which was in keeping with the tongue-in-cheek spirit in which we intended our campaign to be taken." Don't know about you, but I'm pissing myself over here. Previously in controversial Harvey Nichols ads: the holiday walk-of-shame campaign, which was quite a bit more charming than this one. Via New York.

There’s a remarkable difference between wishing for something and the relentless pursuit of a dream.

On this, the 65th anniversary of when they broke ground on Walt Disney World… I ask you this:

What do you want so badly that you’d ignore all the nay sayers, tune out all of negativity, keep getting up every time you get knocked down and when you close your eyes… you don’t see what might be, you see what WILL be?

And… when are you going to start making it a reality?  Walt Disney faced bankruptcy, professional ruin, and more “no’s” than you or I could ever imagine hearing.  But the vision was so strong, so real and so non-negotiable – he simply kept at it.

There’s a famous story that I love.  On the opening day of Walt Disney World, Walt’s brother Roy was being interviewed.  The reporter commented that it was a shame that Walt did not live to see it.  Roy quietly replied, “if Walt hadn’t seen it first, we wouldn’t be seeing it today.”

When you let yourself close your eyes and see the most audacious, crazy but spectacular thing in the world… what do you see and what are you doing to create it?

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1. 
   
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   Evolve (Marketing Lessons from Walt)
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   Surprise (Marketing lessons from Walt)

This pro-condom ad that art and production studio Kollektivet Livet made for Swedish sex advocacy group RFSU was never used, which is a shame because it was a neat idea. The music is arranged in an interesting way, and the tone is more playful than in most condom ads. I mean, condoms are supposed to be fun. And even if you're one of those sad-sack Forever Alone dudes on Reddit, this ad proves there's still room for condoms in your life, if not necessarily in your pants. Via Laughing Squid.

Privacy laws in Russia show no mercy for jerks. If you park in the wrong spot, if you park without giving a damn about other people this is what you get: ostracism 2.0. Russian magazine The Village has created a free app that allows to take pictures of wrongly parked cars, recognize car number plates, the car model and color. The data is streamed live to banner ads that are targeted through IP addresses to locations where these cars were parked, exposing the owners to the public shame.

The agency is Look At Media.