3 Steps to Move Past Your Hang Ups
1. You need people in your life that believe in you.
I think that’s really the most important ingredient. Because Lord knows I can’t count on my self-appraisals. They would have me much too scared to put anything down on paper. And it’s best if your cheerleaders can also guide and teach you in a field, like publishing. I
2. Simply do it.
Do the thing that you most afraid of. And look for a gig (or possibly a writing class?) where you have to do it often, a job that involves deadlines, so by every Sunday you need to have written two pieces. As I have mentioned before, writing Beyond Blue has been immensely helpful in handcuffing the self-doubter in me, because when your contract stipulates that you produce two to four posts a day, you cannot afford to tinker with each one forever, trying to make it perfect. You have to press several times a day, and that’s an important exercise in firing the perfectionist. After you start to do something over and over again, you begin to see the results, and that gives you the confidence to continue putting yourself out there.
3. Quiet the critics.
Both the silent critics who yell obnoxious things from inside your brain and the real critic who insists that you suck and should not go near a keyboard. Like my eighth-grade teacher who read aloud my paper as an example of how NOT to write, and my college professor who refused to write a letter of recommendation for me because he said I “didn’t know how to use words correctly.”
