What is Self-Doubt?
Self-doubt is a feeling of fear, lack of self-confidence, and self-love that often occur to people including authors when writing. As an author, self-doubt creeps up to yourself and tells you that you aren’t good enough as an author or your writing isn’t worth it to be published. Feeling self-doubt can be a harmful enemy for the author’s creative process and might cause writer’s block, low self-esteem, and in the long-term haunted by unworthy feelings.
Self-doubt is a harmful enemy for authors, not only for self-published authors but also for traditional publishing authors as well. Traditional publishing authors must face a lot of rejections, criticism from publishers, and being a competition among other authors. Whereas self-published authors must face such great competition with authors but also deal with marketing strategies to increase awareness among readers. But don’t lose hope! Even though self-doubt eventually will creep up at any time, there are plenty of ways to shake it off and overcome it.
How to overcome self-doubts?
1. Think positive and never let your inner-self critics win
Start by getting the habit of thinking positive, because positive thinking will lead to positive actions that will be beneficial to your creative process. Also, never letting your inner-self critics win by simply don’t think of the phrase “I’m not good enough”. It might sound easy, but practically it is hard to do and you might struggle hard to overcome. Whenever your inner critics come by, try to say a build-up phrase that will diffuse those negative thoughts inside you.
2. Stop comparing yourself to others
Sometimes, self-doubts start from comparing yourself to others, either it is comparing your achievements, success, or even earnings to other people. Social media often the cause of these comparisons come from, seeing other people achieve an award made us think we aren’t good enough. But what we see isn’t describe much about the journey they’ve struggled with. Also, everyone’s journey is different, which doesn’t mean their way of success can be the same as yours.
3. Understand that setbacks will occur any time
You will eventually face obstacles and setbacks along the way as the writing process goes. It about time it is just how you manage to handle and solve those obstacles or perhaps try to find someone who might have experienced the same thing. Experiencing problems doesn’t mean you are suddenly unworthy to be an author, even though it may feel that way sometimes.
Another kind of setback that occurs sometimes caused by people around us. Some might curious about what you’re up to or try to drag you down and tell you won’t be able to achieve those things. Even though you have explained your mindsets, concepts, or reasons to them so they’ll understand. But the good news is, you don’t have to get them to understand.
In the end, when you look back to these setbacks and problems you’ve faced and deal with, you will be pleased and grateful for yourself after what you’ve gone through.
4. Find someone to trust
Even though you’re self-publishing a book, doesn’t mean you will need to face those problems ahead by yourself. Try to find someone to trust, lean on, and might give you wise advice to overcome the problems you’re facing. Start to join an author community on Facebook and get to know them is a good way to build relationships and start to share some experiences.
Other than finding an author to share some experience with, you can also find relatives to trust and wise enough to give advice that might solve your problems.
5. Remember to celebrate
By the time you published your book, remember to celebrate you've become a self-published author. Not many people have able to become an author, some have given up too easily. Give yourself some rewards as a celebration after you’ve published the book and take a rest for a bit before taking another step on marketing strategies. Giving self-rewards able to increase self-confidence and self-love to challenge your self-doubts.