Do you worry about critics, trolls, flames, and negative comments?
One of the challenges I face as a blogger, content creator, manager, and maker is anxiety, and a key way it manifests is with self-doubt imposter syndrome and analysis paralysis.
It's a challenge but I do have some ways to help cope with it, even if they do not eliminate it altogether.
My strategy
What helps me, and what might help you, is I try to approach everything a little different to how we might have been trained.
Projects are experiments
Learning by teaching
Conversations not promotions
Projects are experiments
Seeking or expecting perfection sets you up to fail before you even begin.
Instead, if you look at everything you are doing as part of an ongoing experiment in iterative improvement then things that don't go as planned are opportunities for learning, not embarrassing failures.
Plan, and plan well, just don't expect everything to go according to that plan. Mitigate risk and you will reduce worry, just don't dwell on the what-if scenarios to the exclusion of practicality.
Learning by teaching
When I learn something new I like to pass along that knowledge. I have found that thinking about things in that way actually helps me learn.
Something special happens when you formulate your thoughts around explaining something to someone else.
To avoid falling into the trap of "imposter syndrome", however, it is important to speak as someone on that learning journey, rather than as someone who has superiority. Even if other people see you as someone who has "made it", it's important to remember we are all learning, always.
I try to learn from almost everyone I meet, it doesn't matter if they have a PHD or are coming into a field as a fresh noob.
We all have our individual struggles, and we all have our ways to work with or around them. This leads me to my final point ...
Conversations not promotions
In the twenty-something years I have been blogging, one of the biggest recurring themes has been around markets being conversations. It was most famously expressed and coined in the seminal Cluetrain Manifesto.
What that means is the communication is never one-way, even if you wanted it to be.
Accept that there will always be feedback. Encourage it, expect it, and work with it.
The feedback will often be harsh, mean, unfair, about them, not you. They might argue with their own hallucination, even. But you will also learn.
It is not ppossible to disagree on this I think. Of course everything and everyone have different stories and different ways of looking at life. I’m not perfect and I know that. And for that I’m thankful, then I can say that it’s at least I know one thing for sure:-) if you choose to see life as an possibility to learn, and that failure is not anything other then lessons to learn what not to do, then your on a way to have a great life. What others say about you, will always not be anything more then there opinion. The truth lies within you. If someone don’t agree with you, that is ok:-) we are different people and have different values, different dreams and different view of life.
You might be an adrenaline addict and love the rush, but your neighbor cools be scared of opening the door. Neither is wrong is it?
If you treat your life good, and treat the world as you want to be treaten you should be proud of yourself.
Look in the mirror every morning and evening and give yourself 5 compliments. It doesn’t have to be different every time, just be honest. It can be as simple as, I managed to get out of bed to day. I’m a live, I have eyes that works:-) Do this and have a positive vision of life and you will be one step closer to a happy life:-)
Yep, I've experienced imposter syndrome. Actually, I just said something about getting over it in a post I did yesterday on becoming a freelancer.
What you said about everything being an experiment gives a great perspective. It's good to remember that's true for everyone else around us too—no matter how successful they are and how much they appear to have everything together.
To grow, we have to convince ourselves that we can do something we've never accomplished before. It's easy to feel like an imposter when we only think in terms of what we been able to do before, rather than what we're capable of as we constantly evolve. Taking some time to reflect on what used to seem impossible but has since become easy helps me see this more clearly.
I agree, and give much thought on perception, especially self perception. One tactic I began using many years ago was to begin stalking my thoughts in relation to the actions and words of others. One learns many valuable things about themselves, as well as how the idea of self is perpetuated doing this.
Wow you are a good job and very important post sir.
You got a 16.39% upvote from @ipromote courtesy of @makerhacks!
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