Take charge of your self-esteem and become the person you know you can be. Start by managing your doubt. Many of my writing students who are excellent writers doubt themselves. This faulty perception will affect everything they do. They may even give up writing, because they've lost perspective. For example, a writer with low self-esteem writes five pages and reads them. "It's crap," she says, and deletes the file, or tosses the pages into the trash. A writer with high self-esteem writes five pages and reads them. "Great start," she says, and grins. She knows the pages are crap. So what? She knows that writing is rewriting, and five pages of anything is way better than no pages at all. How do you know you have low self-esteem? You know because you indulge in negative self talk. Negative self talk is insidious, because it's automatic. The tapes in your head are on fast-forward, and you no longer consciously hear them. However, your body reacts immediately: you get a sinking in your stomach, you feel tired, and your work just seems like too much trouble. Unfortunately, you can't zoom from low self-esteem to high self-esteem in an instant. You need to work at it. The good news is that any small action you take to boost your self-esteem helps. Take enough small actions, and sooner or later your self-esteem will be sky-high. Try these techniques. They help. They're not in any particular order, try one, or try them all. => Boost your self-esteem 1. Love what you do: take the time to enjoy your work, and reassure yourself that you love it daily This is vital. If I find that I'm focusing on negatives like a looming deadline for a project that I wont be able to meet, or a slow-paying client, it means that I'm not focusing enough on how much I love writing. I sit quietly for a few minutes, and remind myself. I think about how much I enjoy playing with words and how grateful I am to be paid for what I love doing. Make your work fun. You can do this by interspersing the work you have to do to make money with projects you do just because you want to do them. 2. Develop an optimistic outlook This is easier said than done for a natural-born pessimists. Try this. When you catch yourself with a negative thought, take a few moments to get * really * negative. Take a sheet of paper, and double-spacing each line, write down 20 negative thoughts. Then cross out each negative thought, and write an affirmation to replace it, just above it. For example, if you wrote: "I know I won't get the project I pitched for yesterday", cross that out and write above it: "I will win several lucrative contracts this month". Take a moment to feel how excited you'd be if you signed three big new contracts this week. This technique sounds odd. But it works. It works because we usually don't talk back to the negative voices in our head. Talking back to them shuts them up. Try it. 3. Dont catastrophicize: few things in life are fatal If the toaster sets fire to your kitchen and your car breaks down on the freeway, it's easy to fall into an "everything happens to poor me" mindset. From there it's just a short step to: "The insurance company won't pay" and "I wont be able to pay the mortgage" etc. Stop this negativity as soon as you catch yourself falling into it. You can take control of your mind, and choose the thoughts you'll think. 4. Find your heroes My writing heroine is Barbara Cartland. I dont subscribe to her particular world view, but I love her attitude to her work, and am in awe of her tremendous output. Find a hero or two. 5. Drop control issues You cant control life. Life just is. However, you can control what you choose to think about daily. If you find yourself obsessing, think "Let it go" and think about something else. |
