First published in my newsletter.
I’ve been talking about creativity and low confidence on social media recently and received some heartbreaking messages in reply. Writers and creatives told me that they’re really struggling to create due to being paralysed by fear, because they think no-one wants to hear what they have to say or because they have little to no confidence full stop.
This inspired me to create an ebook called The Little Book of Impact. This is my second ebook and it’s available for free to subscribers of my newsletter. The mini-ebook shares practical and motivational advice - from my own experiences - to enable you to become a more confident creative and make more of an impact with your creativity.
As some of you will already know through my newsletters, essays and blog posts - I have struggled with my creative confidence for a decade or more. But in the last couple of years my mindset changed. That’s not to say my head is swimming with confidence and that it now oozes out of me. I am still scared of failure (and success). I still worry about criticism and negative comments online. I still have to fight myself to start writing as the negative voice in my head is so loud. My tummy still drops, like a free-falling elevator, when I send something new or different out. But I have enough confidence, now, to push myself out of my comfort zone and out into the world where magical things happen. Often times you just need that little extra confidence to enable you to do these things. It’s all about the baby steps.
So what happened a couple of years ago for everything to change for me?
Well, firstly, I started journaling. This made an enormous impact. And from my journals I decided to write essays for Patreon (no longer available) about creativity and confidence. I was analysing myself and my lack of confidence in front of an audience. That’s not to say I think you should do this too - you don’t have to do anything as public! But private journaling and asking yourself why you’re so unconfident or fearful is a good place to start. I began to really understand myself and my behaviours and had many a lightbulb moment as I was writing up my thoughts.
The second thing to happen was a sense of running out of time. This sounds utterly morbid, I know, but I was in my early forties and my son was starting to think about university and his future options. I realised that my baby boy was thinking about his ambitions for the future and I hadn’t even achieved mine, yet. This was one of the reasons we packed up our life with the chickens and ducks. If I wanted to get serious about my writing I had to stop using other things in my life (or adding things to my life) as an excuse for not having arrived at where I wanted to be.
The third activity was more localised to my desk. I started planning out my projects. I realised, again through my journaling, that the majority of my week was spent on creating for social media rather than tackling my big writing projects. It sounds obvious to me now but back then I was so tied up in the process I couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
And the fourth thing happened thanks to the lockdown and stepping back from Instagram. I gained clarity with what I was doing and found my creative purpose.
Now I talk a lot about finding a creative purpose in my first ebook, Journaling Your Goals, but I also talk about it in The Little Book of Impact, too. I share how I found confidence through blogging and Instagram (yes, Instagram has had a positive as well as a negative impact on me), how I managed to push past fears, how planning my projects helped defeat overwhelm and made me more productive - thus increasing my confidence - in addition to sharing some tips on motivation and inspiration.
If you’d like to receive a free copy of The Little Book of Impact then simply sign up to my fortnightly newsletter, Desk Stories. The ebook will be sent to you in return.