Why Outfit Polls on Instagram Are Sneakily Eroding Your Self-Trust

“What outfit should I wear?”

Putting up polls on Instagram with questions like the above seems like a bit of harmless fun. You probably see a lot of entrepreneurs and influencers on social media using it as an engagement or feedback tool. But what if these types of interactions are actually a subtle sign that you’re outsourcing your self-trust in the decision-making process?

In this episode of The Visibility Shift, you'll discover how seemingly small decisions can silently erode your confidence and leadership, impacting bigger areas of your life and business. Using personal examples, I’ll discuss the difference between seeking perspective versus giving away your power, how lack of self-trust bleeds into your brand and beyond, and show how strengthening your “self-trust muscle” can lead to showing up powerfully in every aspect.

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1:50 – The difference between gathering insight and deferring your decisions to others

4:18 – Why you might feel the urge to crowdsource your decision-making process

6:17 – How a lack of self-trust leaks into your business, brand, and leadership

10:08 – Self-trust as a muscle to develop and strengthen over time

12:20 – How the habit of seeking external validation extends beyond your personal style

13:51 – What to do the next time you catch yourself wanting to defer your decisions

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Full Transcript

Welcome to The Visibility Shift, the podcast where style becomes your most powerful strategy for being seen, standing out, and leading boldly. I'm Ellie Steinbrink, stylist and personal brand coach, and if you've ever thought, "My style just isn't working anymore," take this as your sign. You're ready for your next level. And instead of launching into a panicked shopping spree, what you really need is a strategy. A style strategy that reflects where you're headed, not who you used to be or who you think you need to be to fit in.

Because when your style aligns with your brand and your vision, everything shifts. You lead with more presence, you attract the right opportunities and clients, and you fully step into the woman you're becoming. Because showing up as yourself, that's the most strategic thing you can do. Now let's get visible.

Welcome back to The Visibility Shift podcast. All right, let's just get real and honest and raw here. Tell me, have you ever thrown up one of those little Instagram story polls? You know the one, which outfit should I wear? Vote on your favorite outfit. Maybe you've got a big event coming up. Maybe you have a speaking gig.

You have an important client meeting. Maybe it's for a social gathering, but maybe it's also just a random Tuesday where you're feeling a little bit wobbly in your confidence and your outfit selection. I think in the moment, these little polls, they feel harmless, right? They feel fun.

They feel like a way to engage with your audience. I've seen business owners and entrepreneurs do that before leading up to an event. It's almost like a promotional tactic.

But even if it isn't that, maybe it's just a little way to get some feedback to invite people into the behind-the-scenes. But here's what I want you to know about these polls, these sneaky little polls. What looks like engagement, what seems like just a little bit fun, is actually something deeper.

It is a little red flag that you're outsourcing your self-trust. And I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I haven't done this before, because I have. Just like last week—I'm in July now. I know you guys are now listening to this in advance—but just last week, I was finalizing the artwork for this very podcast. And I found myself polling some friends and family about which cover art they liked best.

The reality is that I knew which one best suited the vibe I wanted for this podcast, best suited the energy I wanted to capture. I knew. But still, I found myself reaching out and soliciting for feedback.

And I really just had to laugh at myself about it, because I know better. I know how this works. And yet, there I was, handing over my authority and my decision-making so that this decision would feel safer somehow.

There's nothing wrong with asking for an opinion from someone you trust. I mean, I do this all the time as a business owner, whether it's a business bestie, a coach, your partner, or a best friend. But sometimes you just feel a little bit too in your head, maybe too close to a project or a thing that you want some perspective, you want some additional insight.

But there's a big difference between gathering perspective and insight and deferring your decision to the masses. And we do this with outfits all the time, don't we? You know, you're standing in your closet, and you hear that little voice in your head say, "Am I doing this wrong? Is this the right way to put this together? Well, people think this is too much, is everyone going to like this? Am I going to fit in?" And so in that moment, you take a photo, you put it on Instagram, you say, "Help me choose."

Here's what you're really saying, underneath all of that and what I was saying underneath that when I caught myself doing this in years past, "Tell me I'm okay. Tell me I'm enough. Tell me I'm going to be liked. Tell me I won't stand out in a bad way. Essentially, I really just need some approval here."

But you might also recognize that deep down, you just know what feels right. Maybe you're just not trusting it yet. Listen, you're not alone in this. I've done it. I've seen other powerhouse women do this, too. It almost echoes back to this great human desire to want to fit in.

And I've talked about this before on this podcast. It's a survival mechanism, right? It's that old people-pleasing programming that says if everyone else signs up on this, then it's going to be okay. Then I'm going to be safe.

But let's be honest, you guys, this is a lot more than about style, about choosing an outfit. It's about your relationship with yourself. And when you pull your audience about what to wear, what you're really saying is "My opinion isn't enough," or "I don't trust myself to make the decision."

And look, I get why it feels so vulnerable. Because I have been in this very position where I struggled with what to wear, because your style, your outfit is the first thing that people see. It's so visible. It's a visible part of your brand and your personality. And of course, you want it to be perfect. You want it to be right.

You want to feel good in it. And secretly, we want the compliments, don't we? I do too. But every time you outsource that decision, you defer that decision to others, you weaken your own knowing.

You lose a little bit of your edge. You blur the line between what feels true for you and what feels like a safe option. And I'm just going to put my stake out there and say that I think your audience can feel it too.

I mean, I know when someone on stage that I see or at a networking event, when they are showing up fully authentically and in their energy and have this sort of like, "I'm here, this is who I am, take it or leave it" sort of good energy, you can feel it. You can feel that they have 100% confidence and trust in themselves, can't you? And the deal is, you guys, this isn't just happening in your closet. It leaks into how you show up in your business.

And I think this is where we get into the real big danger zone. At least this is where I've seen it for myself. It leaks into your business, into your brand, into your leadership.

This idea of self-trust isn't just compartmentalized into not trusting yourself to choose an outfit. So here's what happens when you decide to crowdsource your style, okay? You shift from dressing for alignment to dressing for compliments. And that's where we start getting down the slippery slope.

In fact, I found myself doing this at an event I needed to go recently and I really wanted to play the part of the cool stylist who always looks pulled together, who's always thinking of the next thing, dressing in a new way. I had to stop myself and say, "Okay, what am I chasing after here? Am I chasing after an image of what I think I should be or am I chasing after an image of who I know I am?" Because I don't want to be out there pretending and keeping up this shtick when it's so much easier just to keep up the shtick of being yourself.

Let me tell you another story of when I actually did an outfit pull. This was early in my business and I was preparing for what I felt like was a really big keynote presentation. It was one of my first. I was very excited about it and I wanted to nail it, not just what I was saying, but also in my outfit.

I had tried on a bunch of different outfits. I was just going through the process on my own of trying to figure out what I wanted to wear. As I was trying those on, I was like, "Hey, why don't I just make an Instagram story out of this and I'll see what people think."

Again, here, I was starting this process as an innocent little fun thing, another way to have engagement, to bring people in on the decision-making process of how I choose my outfits. I think I had five outfits and I asked my followers to vote. Sure enough, they had opinions.

If I'm just being honest, I remember that the outfit that was chosen by the vote was not the one I really liked the best. Then I started to feel really conflicted because while all of the outfits I had pulled out of my closet were me, you know, I mean, they are in my closet after all, so they felt like me, but I was now feeling very trapped between this little gut feeling inside me that was like, "I think I kind of want to wear that outfit, but everyone's telling me they really love this one."

This was a couple of days before the presentation. Up until the day, the morning of that presentation, I was planning to wear this outfit that everyone had said was their favorite. I was just like, "Well, if everybody says this is the best one, then I'm going to go on stage and everyone's going to think it's the best one."

When it actually came down to leave, it was still like an hour before I needed to leave. I was putting on the voted on outfit and I was like, "You know what? This isn't right." I switched and I put on the thing that I actually wanted to wear.

Thank goodness, because that last-minute switch was the energy shifter I needed to show up and do an amazing job and connect with people and engage with people and not be thinking about my outfit. I'm so glad I trusted in myself at that last moment. That's the thing, you guys, I think if we're being honest, if you're being honest with yourself, you always know you just have to listen and trust that what you know is enough.

Here's what I've learned working with a lot of high-level women. Now, you guys, I'm talking about women who are in the C-suite, women who are running their own businesses, entrepreneurs. They are magnetic leaders.

They're the ones you admire, the ones that walk in the room and just own it. They're not asking the internet what they should wear. They just decide. They tune in to what feels aligned. They show up fully in that decision and they own it. That is exactly what makes them so alluring and so magnetic.

That self-trust is leaking out of them, isn't it? Guess what? Here's the good news for all of you guys. I can say this is true for me too. It's not something you're born with.

In fact, it's something that you can be conditioned out of. Having self-trust can be worn down in you over the years for a variety of different reasons, but the good news is it can also be worked up like a muscle. This sort of reminds me when I first started strength training, lifting a lot heavier weights, going from my dumbbells at home to now lifting in a gym where I was using barbells.

I wasn't good at it at all. I was accidentally dropping the barbells. The number of times I hurt myself is ridiculous.

I kept asking people, is this normal to be hurting yourself so much? I was so sore. It was taking a long time to really get my form down. If you've done this before, you know the form between using hand weights and barbells is totally different.

What felt like a reflex and easy to me was the exact opposite of what I needed to be doing. It was really, really frustrating for me, but those who had done strength training like this before kept reminding me, just keep showing up, keep practicing. It does get easier.

It is a muscle that will grow and shape, not only your actual muscle, but the muscle of moving in a different way and changing how you lift things. It will change over time. It was true.

I did slowly gain more confidence because I kept practicing in it and I kept showing up. The other instance in where I think about showing up and practicing or not practicing self-trust is in some of my closest relationships. I've talked about this before, but I have a big penchant for people-pleasing.

I really had to work hard over the years to unlearn how to defer to everyone else's opinion, ask everyone else what is the next right move, what is the new job I should be taking, what's the next role, what's the yada, yada, yada. When I started my business five years ago, trusting myself and my decisions became an even harder game, especially for someone who was used to people pleasing. I simply couldn't outsource every single decision.

I had to make my own decisions, which obviously I did. I made a ton of decisions on myself, but I really had to trust myself. The more I found myself people pleasing in other areas of my life, like in my relationships, the harder it was to trust my voice in my business too.

This is what I mean when I say self-trust is not compartmentalized. Learning self-trust is a muscle you can flex in your style too. Every time you make a choice from your gut and what you feel is right, instead of deferring to a pole, you strengthen that muscle. And soon you're not just more confident in your style, you're more confident in the rooms that you walk into.

So the last thing I want to say is this, if you've ever pulled your outfit, let's just all like say, okay, been there, done that. You're not bad. You're not shallow. We're just human. We're craving connection.

We're craving approval. We want safety, and I have done this too. But your next level self, that next version of yourself, you're moving towards, that next level demands self-trust, not consensus.

This is what I want you to be thinking about as you move through your day, as you move through your week. The next time you catch yourself wanting to ask, "Does this look okay? Or which one should I wear?" I want you to pause and consult yourself first. What is my gut saying to me? Because I have an inkling that you know, and you always have, and we're letting that feeling be diluted by somebody else who we think knows better.

So remember, always ask yourself, "Which one do I really like best?" If we want to do like a poll on Instagram for an engagement piece, that's fine. But always know that you're going to be true to yourself. And this is my reminder too, along with all of you, I am continuing.

This is not a one-and-done situation. I am continuing to practice this over and over so that I don't forget about who I am and what I want for myself. If you're nodding your head right now, and you're feeling like, "Oh my gosh, I've so been there," it's okay. It just means you're ready for your next level. You're ready to stop outsourcing your self-trust and start leading with it.

And that's exactly what we're doing inside my new program called The Visibility Edit. I'd love to invite you to join me. This is an intimate group experience where incredible women, business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders like you, we're done playing small, we're ready to get visible in a more authentic way, in a bold way, in a way that aligns your insides with your outsides.

If this sounds like something you would love to be a part of, I would invite you to go down into the show notes. There's a link to apply. I'd love to have you in that room with me. We start in September. Until next time, remember, you were not meant to blend in if you were meant to be seen. We'll see you in the next episode.

Thanks for joining me on The Visibility Shift. If something in today's episode made you pause, rethink, or gave you permission to stop playing small, it would mean so much to me if you'd leave a review at ratethispodcast.com/visibilityshift.

If you're ready to stop second-guessing and start showing up as the leader you are from the inside out, The Visibility Edit is where that shift begins. Head to elliesteinbrink.com to learn more and join the next round. Because the next version of you, she's not waiting for permission. She's waiting for you. Let's make it visible.