Don’t be a seller, be a buyer! E144

May 7, 2024

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I bet the episode title made you go: What? What is she talking about? Great, that’s what I wanted. You will love what you will find out in this episode today. It’s pure gold! Let’s get started!

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I got inspired by the phrase “Don’t be a seller, be a buyer” through a YouTube Short the other day. I thought it was such a fantastic viewpoint that I could not pass on the opportunity to make a podcast episode out of this. So what do I mean when I tell you to not be a seller but instead be a buyer?

We have this habit of selling ourselves to others. This can happen in a relationship, in friendships, in job interviews – really any kind of situation especially when we meet new people. We walk into the situation with the mindset of needing to sell ourselves to the people around us: the date, the potential future husband or wife, the possible new best friend, the future boss or person that decides if you get hired or not.

We sell ourselves all the time!

We think we have to sell ourselves all the time. We don’t even realize that we are doing this as a default. It has become such an unconscious and hard-wired program inside of us, that we can’t take another position anymore in such situations. We would never think about not being a seller and being a buyer instead. It does not feel familiar and therefore doesn’t come naturally to us. But that’s what I invite you to do today: Don’t be a seller, be a buyer instead.

There are many reasons why we try to sell ourselves instead of taking the buyer mindset:

Out of a need to be liked
Out of a need to be accepted and to belong
Out of fear of being rejected
Out of fear of what people think of us

There can be so many reasons and they can all be mixed up with each other. The other reason is that this has become a societal mindset and therefore we have learned this from an early age by observing other adults in our lives. As I mentioned, we don’t even know that we are doing it by a default mechanism as if this is how it’s meant to be.

What happens when we sell ourselves?

The danger or the consequence of this mindset is that we are always on the back foot from what we actually want. We are so busy selling ourselves to anybody around us that we never ask ourselves what we want. Do we want this date to become our boyfriend or girlfriend? Do we want this relationship to become marriage? Do we want this new person to truly become our best friend? Do we actually want this job?

We are so engrossed in the act of selling ourselves, being accepted and liked that we never thought of asking ourselves if this is truly what we want.

You don’t go into a shop and try to sell yourself to the shop assistant or the products in the shop. No, you go into the shop to buy something, so you are a buyer first. And generally, you buy something that you like, prefer or are proud of to gift somebody. You don’t go into a shop to walk out of there feeling disappointed, trapped, undervalued, frustrated or betrayed.

But these are all the feelings that we can have once we get into a relationship, a marriage, a job or a friendship. The reason is that it was more important for us to be accepted and liked by selling ourselves than it was to check in if the other person or job was truly what we wanted in our lives.

Take off the seller’s goggles and throw them into the trash!

We run around in our lives with selling goggles on. We look at our lives through the lens of being a constant seller of ourselves. But this is just one way of looking at life. It’s just one pair of goggles. And most people are wearing those goggles so we believe that we have to wear them, too. But, we don’t.

We can take them off and throw them into the trash if we want to. I wanna be very clear here. You have a choice. You don’t have to be a seller in your life. You can decide to be a buyer instead.

Even I am stoked to apply this new perspective

It’s not going to be easy at the beginning to go against the hard-wired program of selling yourself. But would it not be worth it to go through a bit of discomfort to finally get what you actually want instead of getting something just because you wanted to be liked and accepted? Does this not excite you?

It even excites me for myself. I have never looked at it from this viewpoint.

Sure, I have been much more selective of who I spend my time with or what I choose to do with my energy and life. But I never looked at it from a seller or buyer mindset. And it truly enhances the issues that go along with trying to sell myself to others.

So I decided to be very mindful from now on when I get into such situations. I will ask myself if I am in the seller or buyer mindset. I actually have quite a few situations coming up where I can practice this and stop any programming that is still inside me telling myself that I need to be accepted and liked by just anybody crossing my path. I already know that this is not something that I need anymore but the chance of such programming still being in my subconscious mind is pretty high.

All the times you are being a seller and not a buyer

Just look around you. For most of us being on social media means we are selling ourselves. Either we literally try to sell something or it’s just selling a picture of our lives to our friends and family. But even then, we share pictures and posts for the purpose of selling ourselves.

What about when we try to buy something that is more unique like a house, a boat or a unique car? We go into the situation with the seller googles on believing that we have to be accepted and liked by the current owner or holder of the product. Never asking ourselves: Is this really what I want? Does this really tick all of the boxes that I am looking for?

And what happens is that you might settle with something just because you sold yourself perfectly and convinced the other person to select you for the house, the boat or the car. Do you see what I mean?

We fool ourselves

The success of selling ourselves overwrites everything. We are so happy that we got accepted and liked, that we don’t realize that we settled for something that wasn’t really what we wanted. And that’s when we can feel very quickly disappointed, frustrated and trapped.

If we can, including myself, overcome this programming of being the seller and install a new program of being the buyer in our lives, we will get more of what we truly want and be more selective with our energy and time.

Yes, we might need to wait for the right house or partner a while longer than we expected. Or we might have a few lesser friends. But the ones that we do have are giving us more than enough. It’s not about the quantity, it’s about the quality.

Don’t be a seller, be a buyer from now on forward!

But the seller googles that come from fear and a scarcity mindset don’t allow us to go for quality but rather go for quantity and urgency because there is not enough out there for everyone. But that is another whole topic in itself we can go into in another episode.

Today, I invite you to take away the perspective of being the buyer in your life and try it out whenever you get into a situation with new people. Or even do it with people that are already in your life. If I triggered you in thinking about a specific person that you always feel you have to sell yourself to, I dare you to meet this person next time from the buyer’s perspective. And see what happens.

This is going to be such a fun experiment. I can’t wait to apply this new perspective to my life. And I hope you will give it a go, too.

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So whether you choose to donate, leave a rating and review, or both, know that you’re an integral part of my vision. You are helping everyone who struggles with burnout or high-stress levels to experience how awesome their life can be. So, thank you for your support!

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