How to Best Build Your Confidence as an Expert Authority - BM336

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been discussing stumbling blocks or excuses or authors make for not marketing their books.

So far, I’ve covered 3 stumbling blocks, the “lack of money” the “lack of time” and the “lack of marketing and sales” expertise.

Today, I’m going to talk about the fourth and final stumbling block the “lack of confidence”.

Confidence is a word that gets banded around, but do we actually know what it means?

Confidence means feeling sure of yourself and your abilities — not in an arrogant way, but rather in a realistic, secure way.

Confidence isn't about feeling superior to others. It's a quiet inner knowledge that you're capable and feel secure about who you are. This is essential for an author who wants to be seen and recognized as an expert authority

Why is confidence important?

Greater self-confidence allows you to experience freedom from self-doubt and negative thoughts about yourself. Greater confidence helps make you more willing to take smart risks and better able to move outside your comfort zone.

Of course, this is more easily said than done for many authors.

Confidence isn’t a mythical trait that only some people are born with and others not. But rather it’s a learned skill, which means that if you want to learn a skill, it needs practice.

But, before we can practice this skill, we need to dig a bit further into why you might not be feeling self-confident.  

Many of you wrote your book as a way to exhibit yourself as a subject matter expert.

However, as much as you want to share your message with the world, there’s something holding you back. That something is often as a result of one or more fears.

Let’s be honest, we all have fears of one sort or another: be it fear of failure, success, being judged or looking stupid, fear of rejection or inadequacy, fear of the unknown or not being good enough.

Fears come in all shapes and sizes and masquerade themselves in ways we often don’t recognize.

In the case of marketing and promoting your book, perhaps it’s a fear of rejection or being judged or criticized.

After all your hard work, you might feel inadequate to actually parade yourself and your masterpiece to your market.

I’ll share a secret with you a fear of judgment and criticism has plagued me many times during the writing process. I’ve spent countless hours wordsmithing and procrastinating before publishing a book or an article.

It’s not anything that I’m proud of. Yet when I notice this gremlin rearing its ugly head, I’ve learned to pay attention and examine why it’s happening and what I need to do to get over this stumbling block that I created.

You might in fact relate to this.

However, this isn’t about psychology, yet the way you approach every aspect of writing, and marketing your book speaks volumes about you, your mindset, attitude, and fears.

If you’re holding yourself back with excuses, I invite you to look deeper to uncover what really is standing in the way of your progress.

If it’s a lack of marketing knowledge, then you and I can have some coaching sessions.

Alternatively, there are numerous books available on the subject and articles galore. There’s no lack of information when you go searching for it.

Your biggest challenge is likely to be getting overwhelmed because of too much information. Or even getting sucked into buying shiny tools that will magically take care of all your problems.

However, I digress. Before you go in search of the miracle cure to your marketing conundrum, I recommend you be totally honest with yourself and ask if there’s one or multiple fears that stand in the way of your success.

I know that when I started in the speaking business, I developed a fear of success. Why? Because I witnessed many of my colleagues throw themselves into their work, to the detriment of creating unhappy family situations which in many cases, ended in divorce.

Because family is paramount in my life, I created a story that if I immersed myself in my business this would happen to me. So, I consciously held myself back from doing just enough to make a decent living. In other words, I became fearful of my own success.

Knowing this about myself, I now question “what am I afraid of?”

If I find myself making excuses, or using delay tactics to finish a project,

How about you? What holds you back? What are your underlying fears? The better you know and understand yourself, the easier it is to find ways to face and fight those fears. Your goal is to combat them not allow them to get the better of you.

Chances are that no matter who you are, or where you in live in the world, at some point in your life, you’ve had a few or multiple unwelcome visits from a voice inside your head, better known as your inner critic.

What Can You Do To Take Charge of Your Unruly Inner Critic

This voice presents itself in the form of critical and judgmental thoughts, which sneak up on you when you least expect them. They have a nasty habit of holding you hostage, to the point of obsessive or even paralyzing thoughts.

This voice spews out humiliation, criticisms, and reminders that “you’re not good enough” or “you’re a failure.” It judges and disapproves of the way you live your life.

Does this sound familiar?

Recently, I realized that the chatter in my mind has no power without my consent. It’s simply a collection of stories, beliefs, comments, explanations, judgments, worries, fears, fantasies, and dreams. They are based completely on my experience of the world and the people who have influenced me the most.

This critical voice sometimes guides me into savvy decision-making. Often, it rears its ugly head and comes up with nasty irrational beliefs that make fun of the choices I make.

Then without realizing it, I give it permission to stand in the way of me doing something, that deep down I would love to do.

For example, last Thursday night I wanted to go and see a 7 pm movie, then just as I’m making plans, my inner critic kicked into action telling me I have far too much work to do, and it would be irresponsible of me to go out and enjoy myself. Rather I should stay home and knuckle down to take care of what still needed to get done. Because I’ve learned how to handle my gremlin, who by the way is called “Esmerelda” I thanked her for her concern and I would take care of everything that needed to get done, the following morning.

How much time do you spend listening to the voice in your head that shares spiteful thoughts to annoy, or even anger you?

These thoughts or disempowering beliefs can play havoc with your life. We’re often our own worst enemy.

If your inner voice, which might sound a lot like a family member or former teacher, is playing mind games with you, I challenge you to become more mindful of your old beliefs, robotic behaviors, habits, or patterns that no longer serve you and are standing in the way of your success.

To help you do this, let’s look 5 ways you build self-confidence with your mind.

1. Control your self-talk. 

Yes, it’s easy to say and hard to do, but you can consciously control some, or most, of your self-talk. Your mind is always listening to your self-talk and programming itself like a computer from this inner talk. To feel more confident, make sure your inner self-talk creates more, not less self-confidence. For example, when your inner voice starts giving you so-called helpful” advice, just gently say “thanks, for your help, but I’ve got this.” What you’re doing is minimizing the control. You’re not going to get rid of the inner voice, nor do you want to, as its role is to keep you safe.

You just need to let it know who’s in control.

2. Use imagery (visualization). 

Earlier I mentioned that confidence was a skill you need to practice. If you think of it as a muscle, what you’re looking to do is strengthen it, so it gets stronger. According to research, you can consciously strengthen confidence. when you use practice visualization routines. 

Professionals such as athletes, musicians, and speakers use visualization routines to help them be their best. In their mind, they create a clear image of what a perfect performance or win looks like.

Before a speaking gig, I visualize how I want my presentation to go. I visualize the audience loving the information, I share with them. I see their happy faces, a standing ovation, and numerous product sales. This all helps to strengthen my confidence especially when I have some pre-performance anxiety.

3. Prepare obsessively. 

Visualization is one side of the self-confidence coin. The other side is research, study, and preparation. Watch performances of great speakers and presenters, such as Les Brown, or Mel Robbins. And then take to heart a quote that’s attributed to Roman philosopher Seneca, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

4. Resolve perfectionism. 

Earlier I mentioned how I used to wordsmith and procrastinate over my work. This is a form of perfectionism. Perfectionism certainly helps you become good or great at what you do. However, not to the detriment of self-sabotage. True perfection is like chasing a Ferrari at full speed on a tricycle. It’s impossible to catch up with it. It’s easy to feel like a failure because if you can never achieve perfection. Remember that getting it done well is far better than never getting it done.

5. Minimize your Inner critic.

Learn to recognize your internal negative thoughts and feelings. Learn to stop negative, destructive thoughts so you can exercise and strengthen your self-confidence muscle.

Minimizing your inner critic is such a deep and important subject, I’ve decided to cover it in far more detail in my next episode.

Remember you can still get a complimentary 20-minute session with me if you want to discuss some powerful ideas that could work for you.

To schedule time with me go to BrainStormWithSusan.com

Until next time, here’s wishing you much book and author marketing success.