 So, one of my book readers wrote to me and said, George, I'm not sure that I can sustain a presence on social media like you do. I'm afraid that it feels exhausting. I have to feel like keeping an image up of myself and or I might even find right out of things to say, right? Now, this is an issue I think a lot of you face. I recently spoke on a sort of like a summit where the topic was how do you run a business these days or at least even get started without using social media. So there's this ongoing love-hate relationship that a lot of us have with social media and it's not helpful when you are driving with the brakes on. So in other words, you feel obligated to use social media but then you feel like what my reader wrote to me about, I can't sustain a presence, it doesn't feel authentic, feels exhausting, I'm gonna run out of things to say. And I've been on social media now since 2000 and late 2000s, 2008, 2009 was when I got really active and have stayed consistently active since then. And I'll tell you, how did I keep it up all those years and particularly to do it in a way where I still feel energized and able to express myself in a real authentic way on social media after all these years. When what happened was most of the people, most of my friends and colleagues that I started with in the early days, 2008, 2009, most of them are definitely no longer active on social media and I'm one of the few of those early people who are still around and very active and happy to be around here. So the difference is this, I don't think of social media as an image upkeep chore. I think of social media as more like a friendship. So when you have a real friend, do you think to that, do you think to yourself, oh, I gotta go hang out with my friend now, I gotta make sure I have a good image I'm taping up and I make sure I'm gonna plan out the things I'm gonna say. If that were true, to me, that feels exhausting as a kind of a friendship to have to make sure I look the part and are saying the right things. A real friend, a friend that you can really trust like a heart true friend, a heart soulmate type person is one that you feel really comfortable with and because you feel comfortable and sometimes you don't look so good that day and they still accept you for who you are. And sometimes you run out of things to say and sometimes you say things that are not very pleasant and they still accept you for who you are because they see past the image and they see past and they're patient enough to wait with you through the times when you're not at your so-called best. But because you feel so comfortable with them, there is an energy signature that you express authentically that they resonate with and that's why they continue being your friend. There's a soul connection rather than just an egoic human, oh, I like you on the outside and I like you because you say pleasant things to me. That is how I think of social media. Now you might say, really? Yes, I really do think of social media like this kind of a friendship where it's like I'm sometimes not going to be that fine. I really, I said before, I don't mind being unattractive and many of you are very kind. I say, oh, George, you're plenty attractive, whatever, I don't care. I don't mind not knowing what to say sometimes, especially on video. And I don't mind that my writings don't sound so eloquent sometimes and oftentimes maybe I'm a, at best an average writer and reading most, reading most of everything I read online, I feel like I'm below average of a writer, to be honest with you. I'm not being humble or whatever. It's just, I mean, English is my second language. First of all, it's not my native language. I mean, I've been learning English for decades now. So it's, it's almost, it's pretty much native to me, right? But it's still, it's not my born language. You know, I spent the first seven years of my life, you know, not speaking English. And so anyway, I have always felt like I don't write as beautifully as most English writers. That's, that's what I've got to say. And I think I have pretty good taste about good writing because I have an English degree from UC Berkeley. So one of the top, when I was going to school there, it was the top public university English department in the world and I got an English degree there. So I think I have good taste, but I just never became that good of a writer myself because I had, I didn't have the patience and just the, maybe the natural talent and I didn't work hard enough to become a great writer. And still to this day, I don't feel like I'm great. I'm an average at best, right? I mean, you know, let's be honest, right? I'm prolific. That's true. I write a lot more, I publish a lot more than most people, but my writing is just so-so. But my ideas, the ideas within the writing are pretty good sometimes, you know, and pretty interesting. So that's my writing. And then my video, as you know, unedited. Sometimes I have, you know, pauses. Sometimes I don't sound so smart. Sometimes I don't know what to say. And yet you're still here. I probably already lost, you know, 90% of my viewers by this point, but you, by the fact that you're watching this, you're still here and I'm grateful because you are the ones, you are the few that I think of when I show up for social media. The ones that are patient enough because it's the ones who resonate with my energy signature enough to stay through my long, boring videos. And because I, it's because of you. And my relationship to you, and by the way, when I say you, I'm thinking of like this combination of several of you, you know, who are so kind and patient with me and who connect with me and somehow find value even when I'm boring and unattractive or not such a good writer or say some things that are offensive occasionally or dumb or whatever, I'm thinking of you. Those of you who are patient enough to stay with me, I'm kind of thinking of this combination person of this ideal connection, ideal friend. And because I think of you, I am so comfortable showing up on social media and I look forward to it because of you, you see. And the person who wrote me the original question that started this video of I don't think I can keep myself up an image on social media. I don't, then we run out of things to say is not thinking of the ideal connection on social media who resonates so much with their energy signature that they are patient enough and not just patient. It's not even, maybe patience is not even the right word because it's more like you who are still here, the 1% of you who are still watching this it's not that you're patient, but that you somehow get some value even out of my boring, what the average person might consider my boring parts or my less attractive parts. That's what a soulmate is, or at least a soulmate on this level of connection with someone's deeper parts that transcend or that are valuable beyond the surface level attractiveness that society expects on video or in writing or in showing up on social media. So in other words, I value the practice of presence and not the aim towards perfection or another way of saying it is I believe, not just believe, I've experienced that when I am comfortable because I am envisioning you, again the one half of 1% who are still here because I envision how connected and right for each other we are, therefore I'm so comfortable. And because I'm so comfortable, I think that is a perfect way to show up on social media this is what I call authentic marketing if you wanna call it marketing. This is what I call authentic business because I don't have to pretend. And I can practice continually leaning again into that level of comfort and therefore confidence in exploring and being my real self. On video and writing on my group calls when I'm being interviewed on a podcast. And so presence, not perfection because perfection or I should say perfection is authentic presence. That is the true perfection that isn't what society says is perfection, right? Because typically when we say keep up an image on social media, what is that? Where did that come from? That is certainly the external requirements or expectations, but expectations from whom? Who is the one giving you that expectation? It's certainly not the soulmate friend. It's probably your own past conditioning and training from your parents, your authority figures that you gotta dress up in this way, you gotta act in this way, you gotta get straight A's, you've got to whatever, which creates this societal sense of perfection within your mind that oh, this is how I'm supposed to show up on social media. I've gotta have makeup on if you're women or if you wear makeup, I have my makeup on, I've got my hair, it's gotta look right. I'm still too vain about my hair most of the time. I can't look frumpy, right? Gotta look stylish. Okay, if you enjoy looking stylish, fine. But I still wonder how much of looking stylish is an external expectation, an early expectation that you're trying to leave somebody who is no longer helpful for your deepest and truest authentic expression. So this is why I'm purposefully frumpy. I'm purposefully, I'm gonna make myself look frumpy and unattractive because then I strip away everything. Now, maybe you could say I'm self-sabotaging with my unpolished look or whatever, it could be. That could be past conditioning too that I'm reacting to. But regardless, I know that when I show up and I feel comfortable, I don't think I purposely try to be unattractive, but I show up and I'm comfortable as I am here. I don't have to be anything different online than I am walking around in real life. That's the point, right? The way I'm walking around in real life is the way I'm here on camera with you. And because the baseline is a level of confidence and comfort, that is what makes social media sustainable. The authenticity and therefore the lack of using energy to keep up an image is what makes social media sustainable. And someone else said it brilliantly, Gary Vaynerchuk said, document, don't create. Document, don't create. Create means creating content. I gotta create myself, I gotta create some image. I gotta create something brilliant for people. And he said, no, no, no, just document your journey. Document your journey, meaning I'm going along my journey and I'm gonna show you what my journey is like. I'm gonna show you the journey of my mind. I'm gonna show you the journey of my mistakes and how I recover from my mistakes. I'm gonna show you the journey of my accomplishments and the peak experiences that I have. I'll share those with you too. Document all of that and document your evolution. When do you stop evolving? Never. So when do you stop documenting? Never. And as you document your journey, you're gonna naturally, on social media, publicly journaling, public journaling, not only private journaling. I barely do any private journaling actually, I journal mostly publicly. No, I do some, I do some, but as you document and publicly journal, you're on social media, as much as you can distributing your authentic content everywhere, you're naturally gonna draw the people who resonate with your energy signature and therefore it seems that they are patient enough to stick with you through the thick and the thins, through the days when you feel not so attractive and through the days when you are having an up energy, all of it. And that is your true fan base. And that's how you can sustain social media long enough to become ever more skillful and confident because skill and confidence come from practice. You sustain your presence long enough, consistently enough that you become truly skillful, ever more skillful and you become truly more attuned to what is the intersection between your authenticity and what the world yearns for. That intersection takes time to sense into and it takes practice to sense into. So you've got to show up sustainably on social media. There's no better way, there's no better place for you to really discover your calling. If you're gonna do it without social media, how are you going to have all these experiments and tests that allow you, and the algorithm by the way is your friend, the algorithm is not some enemy to like battle and try to game. No, the algorithm will keep on testing your content in front of different people until it finds you your true fans. And most people are not your true fan which is why you don't get likes on most of your content but it keeps testing your content in front of a bunch of different kinds of people until if, oh wait, this one person liked your thing and liked it again and maybe this other thing they didn't like but they liked this one. The algorithm is our friend to help us test without social media you don't have this kind of powerful algorithm for you to keep testing your authenticity and that intersects you between your authenticity and what the world yearns for and to find that sliver, that just right audience. So please stop demonizing social media. It's a genius, brilliant algorithm for your authentic expression. That's what it is. That's how I see it anyway. So I hope this is helpful. May this inspire you to show up more sustainably on social media knowing that it's about like an authentic friendship. And I hope this helps.