Why posting feels so hard (and what it’s really about)

7 surprising patterns I saw rebranding 33 lives in 3 weeks.

4 months ago today, I had my first call with my mentor, Emi Wong. She is the number one YouTuber in Hong Kong, with 7 million subscribers. I had followed her meteoric rise for years, and just as I lost my job as a brand director, she announced a new 1:1 mentorship. It felt serendipitous, so I applied.

I had no idea what to expect. For the first time in my life, I had no next step. I felt lost, but also strangely liberated, with no real idea where to begin. I thought maybe Emi would finally help me launch the YouTube channel I had been talking about for ten years. I wanted guidance, a spark, a push.

4 months later, I still had not started a YouTube channel (yet). 🤣

But instead, something even more aligned unfolded: I rebranded my own life, and in the process, started helping others rebrand theirs.

People even began paying me for it, and I’d already made back what I invested in the mentorship!

The excited message I sent to my mentor Emi today 🥹

But the REAL return was clarity, confidence, and a sense of alignment I hadn’t felt in years.

That is how I began offering 1:1 “Rebrand your life” sessions, inspired by a video series I made after losing my job called Rebranding My Life. After a decade spent rebranding companies, I wanted to see what would happen if I applied the same process to myself. What surprised me most was how many others needed the same.

In the last 3 weeks, I rebranded 33 lives.

A human rights lawyer. A chiropractor. A sex therapist. A relationship coach. Several CEOs and founders. A handful of new mothers. And pleeeeenty of burned-out professionals from the tech and corporate world I come from. Men, women, and non-binary people from across different countries. Every story was unique, yet the same patterns kept surfacing.

I went into these sessions expecting to help people polish their brand or content. What I found instead were much deeper blocks around identity, safety, and self-worth. These were the 7 patterns I saw repeating across 33 very different lives.

1. The real reason posting feels cringe

Most people assume cringe is just the awkward tax you pay when starting something new. That part is true: the first attempts always feel clumsy, and that is something you get over with more practice.

But what I discovered in these sessions is a deeper layer that rarely gets talked about. Cringe lingers when there is misalignment between your inner truth and your outer expression. One CEO said every Linkedin draft felt cringe because she sounded like a Linkedin bro. Another thought she had to be high-energy on camera even though she was naturally mellow and introverted, so every take felt fake and exhausting.

The common thread wasn’t skill or practice, it was alignment. When what/how you share doesn’t match who you are, it feels like performance instead of self-expression. The cringe dissolves when your outer expression aligns with your inner truth and your clear north star. That is when visibility shifts from performance to practice, and from practice to confidence.

2. You don’t need a content strategy, you need to feel safe

The deeper I looked, the more I realized it wasn’t really about the content at all.

The real block was safety, whether people felt safe being seen as themselves. Most came to me asking for frameworks or templates, but strategy was never the true issue. It was fear of judgment and exposure. One client said she wanted to build a faceless brand so she wouldn’t have to be judged. Another confessed she deleted a comment she made online after realizing the post was tied to fake news, and then worried it might ruin her credibility forever. Others put enormous pressure on a single post, as if one wrong move could break their career. Some tried to bypass the discomfort by outsourcing or automating, hoping if someone else managed it the fear would disappear. But you cannot outsource visibility. Underneath all of this was the same theme: they didn’t feel safe being visible as themselves.

Safety is not just a nice-to-have, it is the foundation of visibility. Until that shifts, no content calendar or strategy can work. Real safety comes from slowly proving to ourselves that we can show up and survive it.

3. Your mess is your message

And once people started to feel even a little safer, the next question was always: “okay, but what do I actually share?”

Almost every client wanted to present something professional and polished, then wondered why no one cared. We are all tired of generic tips to scale your business. What we crave are human stories. One client had not posted for two years. She finally shared a short, honest note about burnout and how it changed what she wants to create now. That simple post brought more replies than months of perfectly planned content. Your mess is not the whole story, but it is the bridge.

What I noticed again and again was the energy behind the sharing. When someone was posting to prove something, the words landed stiff and heavy. When they shared to connect or to help, it felt alive and human. Proving drains. Sharing connects. That is why the mess resonates: it is not about proving worth, it is about creating connection.

Your mess is your message

And here is the most common objection that comes up: “What if showing my real self turns people off?” Or, “What if I shoot myself in the foot with future employers or clients?”

People worry that authenticity will burn bridges or close doors. But if being yourself turns someone away, they were never your people. Appeasing them would only bring unaligned opportunities that drain you.

Being yourself is an incredible filter. The wrong people leave, and the right ones find you.

4. Perfectionism is a self-worth problem

It is exhausting to constantly edit yourself to avoid judgment. Doing endless takes to get the perfect one. Many described themselves as perfectionists with high standards. Wanting to look polish. But underneath, what I felt was a lack of self-belief. A sense of not being good enough. Fear of judgment. Perfectionism isn’t about high standards, it is about self-worth.

Sometimes it even hides behind the mask of efficiency. I saw clients hunting for the perfect tool, tweaking systems, organizing drafts, but never actually posting anything. It looked productive, but it was really procrastination in disguise.

The cure is knowing we don’t need to be perfect to be worthy. That our imperfection is what makes us unique, relatable, human. (+ priceless in this AI age.)

5. You don’t need a niche

Other than perfectionism, a common worry is: “am I allowed to be many things at once? Or do I need to shrink myself into one neat niche?”

Again and again I met people who thought being multi-passionate made them flaky. That they have to choose a thing. "I have so many interests and passion projects, and I can't decide which one is my thing."

But what they couldn’t see is that their unique mix was the point. I have been there too. For years I tried to fit into containers that only held parts of me, instead of all of me integrated. That split always led to misalignment.

When I stopped trying to find my niche and just be me, my creativity began flowing. There’s only one Hong Kong-born, Paris-based brand director who also loves yoga, matcha, brunch, spirituality, and personal growth. (hiiiiii 👋) You are creating a category of one. Your so-called scatter is your differentiator. Your niche is simply being fully yourself.

6. The tug-of-war between the “real job” and the real you

That question of niche often sat on top of something even deeper, the weight of what counts as a “real job” or a “worthy identity” in the eyes of others.

One client told me she feels proud of the way she runs her home, genuinely like a CEO, yet she feels pressure to downplay it because she is “just a mom” and worries she wasted her education. That outside shame silences a lot of people who actually love the life they chose. Her pride sat right next to guilt, and that guilt came from social conditioning that devalues roles like caregiving and stay-at-home parenting.

Others hesitate to claim identities like coach, poet, or spiritual guide because they think those roles are less legitimate than sales director, tech marketer, or businesswoman. Some offers feel easier to sell than others, like leadership training compared to intuitive dancing. Those judgments come from conditioning, not truth. And they stop us from sharing our real passions and unique gifts with the world. Your work is real when it is real to you. Authority comes from embodiment, not a title. When you call it by its name and fully own it, you unlock the energy to share it.

7. Clarity comes from action

Again and again, people told me they were waiting. “I don’t know what my purpose is.”
“I need the perfect plan first.” “I’ll feel more ready when…”

Some had been stuck in that loop for years. The plan never arrived. The purpose never dropped from the sky. Readiness never came. Waiting only kept them invisible.

Because the truth is clarity comes from action. Purpose comes from following little sparks. Readiness comes from doing, not from waiting.

“When you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” - Rumi

Why you can't find your purpose

The deeper block underneath was a lack of self-trust. One client called herself lazy because she never followed through. Another had such a big dream that it felt impossible, so he stopped trying at all. What they had really lost was faith in themselves. I know this one personally. For years I started more projects than I ever finished. I thought I had no discipline. Every broken promise chipped away at my self-trust.

What I have learned is the way back isn’t big leaps but tiny steps. Lower the bar until you can’t fail. Allow yourself to be terrible for the first 30 attempts. Steven Bartlett’s advice to someone starting a podcast is to “give yourself one year a year to be really, really bad at this” as a testing year so you try enough shit to know what works. Write one paragraph instead of forcing a masterpiece. That is how self-trust grows, and with it, the confidence to take bigger steps.

Branding is identity work

Rebranding 33 lives has confirmed what I have always believed: branding isn’t logos or taglines, it’s the story of who you are. Just as companies rebrand when their outside no longer matches their inside, people need the same reset when their old story no longer feels true.

In corporate, a rebrand starts with strategy: belief, vision, mission, differentiators—before any design or campaign. With people, it’s no different. We begin by clearing the blocks. Naming your why. Claiming your superpowers. Owning the stories that shaped you. Only then does expression flow, effortlessly, because it’s authentic to you. That is the work of rebranding your life.

One client started her Substack the same afternoon after our session. Now she’s writing weekly, inspiring others and reconnecting with creativity she thought she had lost. That is the power of identity work.

And it still amazes me that all of this began with one mentorship call, at a time when I felt completely lost. One spark changed everything for me, and now I get to pass those sparks forward.

These 33 sessions showed me how much joy I find in this work, and I don’t want to stop!! I’m creating a signature ✨Rebrand Your Life✨ program, reimagining the frameworks I once used for companies, now to go deeper with people. If these lessons spoke to you, you’ll love what’s coming next. 🥰

Big love,
Joei

P.S. While I build the signature program, I’m continuing the mini sessions. If you’d like a taste of this work, you can still book a 30-minute Rebrand your life session here. I’d love to meet you there. 💛