It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote anything for this page. I’ve been trying to work on my business, but if I’m honest, I’ve been doing more overthinking than actual work. Somewhere along the way, I seem to have lost my self-belief.
I spend my days dancing between telling myself that I can do it and questioning whether I am capable of anything at all. It’s like some horrific pantomime being played out in my head. A part of me is trying to keep my head above water, but another part of me, AKA Veronica, is intent on pushing it under.
Although I know that it takes time to get things up and running and get the momentum going, I’m being so hard on myself about my own business not exploding onto the scene after only a few months. I launched Clare H Writes back in November, set up social media pages and a website, wrote a few pieces of content, and asked my friends and family to spread the word. In the grand scheme of things, it’s still very early days, so why do I feel like such a failure?
Why do I have that constant niggling voice in my head telling me that I can’t do it and that I should just give up now? That I will never be good enough and I was stupid to think I ever would be. I wouldn’t have said these things to my friends, so why do I think I am so deserving of such negative words?
I realised that Veronica had sneakily crept her way back into my thoughts and had been chipping away at the self-confidence I had slowly been starting to build back up. After one particularly bad day, I thought about what had changed recently, and it occurred to me that I had stopped doing the one thing that I loved, the very thing I had set out to do: writing.
I had removed the one thing that brought joy to my soul to get my writing business off the ground. I had shifted all of my efforts into getting more clients, spending all of my time thinking, reading, and listening to ways of doing this when really, the best way to market myself is to show people what I can do. To write.
All the “learning” I was doing in order to grow my client list was, in fact, just confusing matters. I was reading so much conflicting information that my head was spinning.
So this week, I’m shifting my focus to writing: writing content for my social media, writing copy for my website, and writing examples for my portfolio. Making this change in my focus has made me instantly happier, and I feel enthusiastic about working again, instead of dreading those hours in the day when I would be left feeling at a loss for how to move forward.
If you find yourself feeling lost in a sea of negative thoughts, remind yourself of your goals, your hopes, and your dreams. Remember what makes you feel that fizzle of excitement because that is what you should be doing and the direction you should be going in.
