30-Day Confidence-Building Challenge: Confidence Killer #3 Avoidance

You may have noticed that this space has been blank for a few weeks.

That's because, much as I love this blog, I've been wading through the deep muck of avoidance.

You know the feeling: Those urgent matters, or at least the important ones, are tickling at the edges of your consciousness. But with all your considerable brain power, you're focusing on.... Facebook. Or email. Or your child's dance recital costume. Or that story that's easy. Or those emergency edits.

What you're not doing is taking care of the stuff that needs taking care of. What you're not doing is building confidence.

Why do these go together? The best explanation I can give is to answer that question with another question:

When you've been practicing avoidance, how do you feel at the end of the day? Heavy, right? Lethargic. Maybe a little ashamed. And usually very overwhelmed with the growing to-do list you'll have to tackle tomorrow.

Now switch it. When you've done the scary stuff and faced down those tasks you were avoiding, how do you feel at the end of the day? Chances are, you feel lighter. You feel energized. Strong. Proud. Confident.

This week, my goal for each day has been to face the tasks I've been avoiding. It's painful sometimes. I'd really rather surf the web than work on a story assignment that's more idea than angle. Trudging through the embarrassing and sometimes demoralizing process of narrowing down an amorphous idea into a sharp, concise story isn't high on my priority list, especially when I'm already feeling down. So how do I make myself do it?

Get aware
The first part is always coming out of the fog of avoidance and into the stark and sometimes uncomfortable reality of awareness. Maybe you've sunk into Facebook so far you can't see your email list. When you come out of that denial, expect to feel overwhelmed, ashamed and stuck. It won't last, but remember the feeling. Want to avoid feeling that way? Avoid avoidance!

Accept it
What most of us naturally do is start berating ourselves for losing a few minutes, hours or days to avoidance. How could we be so stupid? How could we have fallen into that trap again?

Well, we do it because we're human. Lighten up on yourself. If berating yourself worked, you'd be winning Pulitzer Prizes and accepting that Nobel Peace Prize right now. It doesn't. All it does is make you so uncomfortable that, guess what? You slip right back into avoidance.

Skip that whole trap. Just practice telling yourself, "I accept that I lost X minutes/hours/days in avoidance. Yep. I did it again. This is part of being self-employed." Like the weather, it comes and goes. Try not to turn it into a referendum on your worth or professionalism.

Take action
Welcome to the hard part. That stuff you've been avoiding? It's staring you in the face. Choose one of those things. For me, it was email yesterday. I used to be so good at clearing out my email. I was an inbox-zero girl. Yesterday, I had 355 emails in my inbox. Overwhelmed? Oh, sure.

So I just started. I sat down and spend some time clearing them out. I found an email from an editor that needed replying to. I sent her three story ideas. I started feeling better about myself.

Let it snowball
I kept going. I found some news reports on subjects my editors follow and forwarded them as a courtesy. I got bolder. I followed up on an outstanding invoice. That felt so good that I sent three invoices that needed sending. Finally, I did the big thing I'd been avoiding for a week: I called the source I needed to call for a story I'm working on.

Don't ask why I was avoiding it. I don't know. The important thing is that I did it. I went to bed feeling better about myself, feeling in control of my life and my business, and confident that today could be just as good.

And you know what? It has been.

How do you fight avoidance?

30-Day Confidence-Building Challenge: Confidence killer #2 Isolation

Last week, I wrote about how comparing ourselves to other writers makes us miserable and is the fastest way to kill our confidence.

Today, let's talk about another confidence-killer: Isolation.

It's an occupational hazard: If you're self-employed, you're spending a lot of time by yourself. And if you're lucky, you're spending a lot of that time working. But there's the rub: Especially if you're newly self-employed, you've got more time than work, and that alone time, with all those doubts and insecurities nagging at you can wear you down to the point where you're doubting everything:

• Doubting your skills ("Everyone else out there has more talent/more tech skills/is younger/better connected than me")
• Doubting your ideas ("Everyone else out there probably has better story ideas and it's easier for them to generate them.")

Before not too long, you find yourself doubting your career path ("Everyone else has always been focused/knows what they're doing/is going to be more successful than me") and then to your very place in life ("Everyone else knows what they're doing with their lives. Oh my God, what am I doing with my life?!?").

And bingo: Paralysis.

No work is getting done. No queries are being sent. No effort is being made to find new clients or expand your creativity. How could it? You've decided it's all pointless.

And you're certainly not talking to other freelancers about your doubts, because you've already convinced yourself that everyone else has it all figured out/has it all together/is wildly successful, while you slowly decompensate into a mass of quivering insecurity.

So how do you cope with the fear, especially when being alone is a part of the job?

Here are a few ideas, and please share your own in the comments:

Go to writers' events
I know they're scary. I know you feel awkward. I know you don't know any of them, but that's the point. You have to get out there and meet freelancers and build a network of other creative professionals you relate to and you can call. Don't go with making the goal of getting work. Go with the goal of meeting other creative types and trying to find out about social get-togethers, potential co-working set-ups and people you might want to have lunch with and talk shop.

Get an action buddy
Now that you've met some people, start asking them if they'd be up for. Tell them what you have in mind: Daily or weekly phone check-ins on your progress and how you're doing. The key is that both of you need to participate. That way, you'll hear the struggles of another writer and be reminded, perhaps daily, that you're not the only one with those doubts.

Join a writer's group
I've suggested this before, but I'll tell you that it's my lifeline. Getting together with a group of freelancers and talking about successes and challenges, and checking in on goals gives me a built-in place where I can talk about my doubts. It also reminds me that everyone has doubts, that everyone struggles. It's incredibly freeing.

Have lunch
Whether you meet them through writers events, Facebook or other organizations, you'll inevitably find freelancers who might want to get out of the house regularly and meet face-to-face with a real-life human being. Get together. Have lunch. Make a goal of doing it once a month, and you'll be out of your house and away from those running thoughts more often.

The key is to interrupt those spiraling fear thoughts.

How do you break the isolation and the downward spiral?

Photo by chad_k.