Sometimes I feel like if I do so I’m basically serving as an ad, and I don’t really care for that, especially if later I find that the business was scummy in some ways (which is often the case, especially later as it changes leadership/ownership).
If you do, how do you deal with it?
Talking about the things that are working well for you in your life is fairly natural. But the fact that you feel like you’re an ad suggests that maybe you’re doing it too often.
We cannot know everything about the businesses that we interact with, so I don’t think we need to feel guilty if we later learn that a business is shady. Actually, if you occasionally mention the businesses that you endorse, you might find that people will tell you about some of those shady business practices. And that can be stressful because it might sound like a personal attack, but it’s also an opportunity to take another look at your current situation and figure out what you want to do in the future.