Is it your ultimate dream to spend your days writing or creating? Would you like to make a living from your creativity? Or, perhaps you simply want to develop a regular writing practice, complete a first draft of a novel, develop a blog, sell your doodles?
But you can’t bring yourself to do it.
At the start of the week, month or year you have positive intentions. You tell yourself that you’re going to knuckle down and get ten thousand words written, or develop one of your sketches, or create something in order to sell it.
But then life happens. The bathrooms need cleaning, the children need your attention, life admin becomes incredibly urgent. Or you find yourself scrolling through other creatives’ Instagram feeds to gain inspiration, you feel you should read that book first on how to develop the perfect story or you just can’t stop yourself doom-scrolling on the various news apps.
The end of the week, month or year arrives and you’re no further forward.
This was me for many years. And I know I’m not the only one. There was always ‘something’ that needed to be done for the chickens or the ducks. I decided I was going to learn how to create video and become a YouTuber. And don’t get me started on how many hours setting up an Instagram photo took me.
I believed all of this was important. I used it to justify not spending time on my writing.
The truth is I had no confidence around my writing and spending time on these other activities gave me a valid reason not to step out of my comfort zone and share my writing with the world.
In the confidence and creativity questionnaire I sent out early last year 97% of the respondents believed their creative ambitions might have been met by now if they hadn’t been so unconfident. That’s 97% of people who were putting off their creative ambitions because they had no self-belief in their own creative abilities.
But, and I know this from my own self-reflection and spending time with my one-to-one clients and Club Members - there isn’t always an awareness that confidence is lacking. Instead they’ll tell themselves that they’re lazy, untalented, undeserving, or a fraud. And their confidence lowers another notch.
It’s exhausting, debilitating, frustrating, mentally draining and makes us miserable, bad-tempered and have rock bottom confidence. It’s no wonder we then have no mental energy left to create. It’s an ongoing cycle.
Please let me reassure you - you’re not lazy, you’re not untalented, you’re not undeserving and you’re not a fraud.
You’re just struggling with your confidence.
So what do you do about it? What can you do about it?
I genuinely feel that you can break through the cycle. Many writers and creatives I know struggle with self-confidence yet are pushing forward. And, in the last couple of years, I’ve managed to break the cycle, to stop procrastinating on YouTube and Instagram and start writing and to build a creative business.
I spent years struggling with my confidence and I still do. I still get nervous as anything when I take a step out of my comfort zone but I’m no longer allowing my lack of confidence to stand in my way.
So, how did I break the cycle?
For me everything started to change when I started writing in my journal. I discovered what mindset issues were holding me back. And my goodness there were a number of issues that I addressed.
Then I discovered my creative purpose.
It took many months of journaling before I discovered my purpose but once I did it was like a switch. My purpose guided me and gave me momentum to take small steps - tiny steps - out of my comfort zone. Which in turn gave me confidence.
It can be done. And since this happened for me I’ve written a couple of ebooks, I’ve taken on clients, I’ve launched a membership group and started to do online talks to help other women. Women just like you.
My latest talk, or masterclass, is called Become Creatively Confident and is held online on Tuesday 27th July at 7pm BST (replay available) . Tickets are available now (at a very reasonable price). In this talk I’ll expand on the different mindset issues that could be affecting your creativity. Once you understand the cause of your procrastination and what’s holding you back, I’ll show you how you can push past it and enjoy your creative project.
If you enjoyed this post:
If you feel really unconfident when it comes to your writing or creativity I have a Membership club called The Confident Creative Club. This is a gentle, friendly group where we analyse and work on our creative mindset blocks in conjunction with taking action on our projects. This won’t just be a place to learn but to push forward with our creative goals and make real progress.
I write about journaling and how it can help reach your creative goals in my recently published workbook, called Journaling Your Goals. It can help you find your creative purpose and to become more productive, more motivated and less scared. To find out more and to order then click here.
I also write tiny essays in my newsletter which I send out about twice a month.
