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By ProBlogger Expert Ellen Jackson.<\/em><\/p>\n Believe you can and you\u2019re half way there<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Theodore Roosevelt, allegedly<\/em>.<\/p>\n Once upon a time I decided to write and publish a book. I wasn\u2019t a writer. I had no experience. I had no contacts in publishing. I had no idea really. I just really thought it would be great to write a book.<\/p>\n Fast forward two years and I held in my hand not one copy of my co-authored self-improvement book, but three. One published in the UK and Australia. Another published in the US and a third published in The Netherlands. In Dutch.<\/p>\n The path to get to that point was challenging \u2013 at times torturous. For months during the writing process I could not enter a bookstore due to the anxiety it provoked surrounding my own ability to pull this task off. But I did it and it felt good.<\/p>\n Recently, Mr ProBlogger himself<\/a> asked the question: \u2018What is your biggest challenge as a blogger?<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n He produced a wordcloud and these are the responses that stood out to me:<\/p>\n Readers, writing, audience, traffic, content and ideas were in there too but it was these emotions<\/em> that struck me. Our biggest challenges are our feelings. I know them well.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a conversation you hear over and over again in Facebook groups, in blogging and entrepreneurial circles, anywhere you find people with big goals and big plans. We can do tech. We can do the words. We can do the ideas and the numbers. We can do the work.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the feelings<\/em> that bring us unstuck – and most of those feelings boil down to confidence. Or not enough of it.<\/p>\n A lack of confidence holds us all back at times. We\u2019re human. We worry about failure. We worry about others\u2019 perception. We\u2019re scared of rejection. We second guess ourselves. We procrastinate.<\/p>\n Even the biggest issue identified by Darren\u2019s readers \u2013 time \u2013 is underpinned by confidence. We don\u2019t feel we have time to do what we want to do, but scratch the surface and you\u2019ll find that if we\u2019re confident about our path to success our priorities quickly reshuffle to find that precious time. Confidence = time.<\/p>\n For starters it\u2019s a slippery concept. What is it exactly?<\/p>\n Psychologists rarely talk about confidence as a thing. It\u2019s many things. It\u2019s hope. It\u2019s optimism. It\u2019s self belief and it\u2019s self-efficacy \u2013 the degree to which you think and feel your actions will achieve results.<\/p>\n When these things combine we believe that we can achieve our goals and we get on and do it, but the path to getting there differs for each of us.<\/p>\n Here are some tips:<\/p>\n If a project is new and exciting and challenging it comes hand in hand with moments of self-doubt \u2013 often downright struggle \u2013 but it\u2019s the struggle towards our important goals<\/a> that brings the sweetness to your success.<\/p>\n Work on your confidence and keep going. If I can do it, you can too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n
Why is confidence so hard?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
So how do we build our confidence?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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