Increase Your Confidence and Self-Esteem — Now!
Why is it important for writing your next article?
What is Confidence and Self-Esteem?
Confidence is our sense of self-worth, which is often influenced by past experiences. Self-esteem is how much we value ourselves as an individual.
Confidence — We need to take risks and try new things to see that we are capable of being successful at almost anything.
Self-Esteem — Find someone who can be a good role model for us and look up to them as an example of how awesome people can be.
Face your Challenges Head-On.
By facing your challenges, you will be building your self-esteem and becoming more confident. The first thing to do when it comes to building self-esteem is to overcome the fear of failure. Failure is a step closer to your success!
Self-esteem is what makes you feel confident, empowered, and strong enough to face the world. It gives you the ability to fight back against any adversity.
Self-esteem is something that is built up over time. Building it up does not mean overcoming an obstacle in one day. It’s about taking little steps every day to overcome your fears and insecurities.
The key here is asking “What’s the worst that could happen?” and then accepting and embracing it as a possibility.
Is Your Writing a Challenge for you?
The great thing about writing on Medium, is that you can start writing without too many obstacles. If some of your articles get no views or no claps, too bad — part of the learning experience. Time to make a few adjustments and try again. Keep writing, you’ll eventually get better and better.
Start Building Your Confidence and Self- Esteem
Here are some steps to build self-confidence and self-esteem:
1. Decide your values and what it is that makes you worthwhile. For example, some of us on Medium want to be acknowledged as good writers and make some money. What is it you want?
2. Break down your values into smaller tasks you can achieve today by taking care of yourself. This involves you figuring out how you will be able to “fit in” your writing. If you work a full time job, you need to carve out time you dedicated to reading, writing and publishing your work.
3. Write down your values every day, reminding yourself of what you are working towards. Review and adjust your schedule or goals as needed. I have changed my plan a few times as I teach and work long hours.
Some of My First Medium Challenges:
After reading what many Medium writers suggested: “the one article or more per day method” — I gave it a try. I was just starting and self publishing. In my first week I published two articles.
The following week I jumped in — head first to do 6 days in a row. I could have easily completed the 7th, but I was feeling burnt out so I changed my plan. The increased stress and lack of sleep, exhaustion resulted in poor quality writing, in some of my early articles.
Learn from your trials. I am still glad I tried it, I learned this was not going to work for me, with my current schedule. I’ve settled for 4–5 articles per week, but give myself the option of more or less, based on “life happens”. Doing more or less does not make me a failure, as long as keep writing.
Final thoughts:
Once you have tried several different methods, stick with one that allows your writing to flow. Less stress will mean that you will enjoy the writing process, instead of dreading it. Your writing will become better.
Give yourself a day off from writing, without feeling guilty! Your brain will thank you. Actually, you might not know this, but even if you’re not actively writing — you’re still figuring things out. That’s why a short power nap can give you golden nuggets of information for your next topic.