Confidence, Dilligence, and Expectations: You need to get these right!

April A to Z Blogging Challenge, hosted here.

My theme this year is exploring the link between mental health and creativity. See my stance on this here.

 Confidence                      Dilligence              Expectations     

When growing yourself and working on your mental health, these three words are the pillars of what determines whether you will be successful. Spoiler: you also need them in excess to succeed as a writer!

Confidence- A strong sense of confidence is not as simple as waking up one morning and saying "I'm just the greatest." True confidence is not a belief that  you can do a thing. It is belief in YOURSELF. To be truly confident in any situation you need to feel grounded, connected to your purpose, and strong within yourself. I think the word "confidence" is overused and oversimplified. It's like saying you want to "be healthy." To be healthy you need to work on your diet, physical activity, mental and emotional wellbeing, and address any habits or underlying medical conditions, just to get a start. To be truly confident you have to be self-aware, secure in the knowledge that you can make a difference/be in control of your life, have a strong knowledge base, etc. etc. etc. And just as there are may elements that make up a "confident" person, there are also many areas that confidences bleeds over into. Such as your writing. In order to be the best writer you can be, I think you need to be confident. I'm not saying you take whatever crap you spew out and think it's just the best. I am saying you have to build a sense of self-efficacy around your writing just as you do when building up your self-esteem.

Dilligence- In order to do any of the above, you will need to be dilligent. You need to establish habits and routines that support your work, and stick with them ruthlessly. It's hard to do that. So hard. But so worth it. To me dilligence  means not only doing a task every day (like working on self-confidence, or writing those 5,000 words) but also thinking about what you are doing. To me the word evokes a sense of mental/emotional awareness as well. A bit of thought about WHY you are so dilligently doing XYZ.

Expectations- So many times, we are slaves to what we "should" be doing/saying/thinking/creating that it ruins our life. You need to let go of your expectations. If you are struggling with your mood today and you have taken some actions to move yourself out of it, then let it be. Don't wallow, but for the love of the gods don't flog yourself either! And that  goes for writing too. When you give yourself space and let go of expectations, creativity will flow from you naturally without you having to force it.

Make improvements in any of these areas within yourself and I guarantee your writing or creative endeavors will benefit as well.

Best of luck!
Kaye