One of the hardest things that some people ever do is transform themselves from a person full of self-doubt to a self-assured person that believes in themselves. But, the truth is that no matter where you are in life right now, no matter how many mistakes you’ve made, opportunities you’ve passed up, or what’s happened to you in life, you can overcome your self-doubt and start believing in yourself.
So, congratulations on reading this article, soaking it in, and implementing the suggestions. Once you do, within just a short period of time you’ll start feeling better about yourself, feel more confident, successful and know that your future is bright.
Let’s get started learning how you can overcome self-doubt and believe in yourself.
The dictionary defines self-doubt as, “the lack of confidence in oneself and one’s abilities.” This is a very good definition, but it doesn’t fully demonstrate the problems caused by self-doubt and not believing in yourself.
Think about these questions:
In this article we’ll give the answers to all these questions and more. If it helps, take notes as you read through when you notice issues that resonate most with your current situation. Everyone has different issues, reasons for their self-doubt, and problems in their life. You’re a unique person and there is no one-size-fits-all answer.
There are many dangers inherent in hanging on to self doubt that you should be aware of. If you suffer from self doubt, it’s important to understand the type of damage you’re doing to yourself if you continue to hang on to it. It has affected your past, is affecting your present and can devastate your future if you don’t deal with it. Here’s why.
As you can see and may have experienced yourself, self-doubt can be dangerous and these are all good reasons on their own to work toward overcoming self-doubt and learning to believe in yourself.
Knowing how you developed self-doubt can sometimes help lead to recovering from that condition. You can build self-esteem by getting to the bottom of how it happened.
No matter how you determine what causes your self-doubt, you’ll be able to overcome it. It doesn’t matter if it’s something that developed over time or something you learned in childhood. You can work toward building your belief in yourself so that you can overcome self-doubt.
Unfortunately, many people learn to put off their dreams and limit their ideas due to well-meaning parents (or sometimes they’re not so well-meaning but perhaps abusive parents) who are also stuck in their own self-doubting lives and cannot ever envision anything different.
This happens a lot in communities where people are often born very poor and end up lacking experiences and education to see beyond their own lives to the possibilities that are outside their world.
For example, they might discourage their child from becoming a writer by telling them no one makes money writing, or they might discourage their child from becoming anything that is above what they’re used to due to the fear of the costs and the fear that their child really can’t do it even if they try. But this is only due to their own lack of success and understanding of life.
This rubs off on the kids. That’s why statistically most people do not break out of the class they were born to. The exciting thing to remember, though, is that some people do, and the reason they do is they were able to see and envision the possibilities and then take the action to see it through.
If you used to have a good self-image and didn’t suffer from much self-doubt but then suddenly or over time started to develop self doubt, it’s possible that you allowed your past experiences and bad relationships to get into your head and create this self-doubting experience.
It can be a parent relationship, a friendship, a love interest, a spouse, even a child who is dragging you down and creating the self-doubt in your life. These relationships are sometimes defined as toxic relationships. Unfortunately, a toxic relationship can involve any type of relationship, both relatives to non-relatives.
If you are still in any of these relationships, it may be time to end it if you cannot explain to the person that you are going to do what you’re going to do regardless of their opinion due to fear of abuse.
At some point in your life, if you had a job of any kind that turned into a bad experience (especially if it started with your first job), this can stunt you for a lifetime if you let it. Sadly, many people, especially those who take service-oriented jobs or lower paying jobs, end up with bad experiences.
As you can see, this path can end up affecting a person badly at the time and in their future if they are unable to understand that sometimes things happen to good people. They can’t accept that they’re a good person and a bad thing happened to them. Or they can’t learn from their mistakes and realize that they can do better next time. This is a dangerous pattern that can grow and become more than it should.
Sometimes a person can suffer from self doubt simply due to a lack of experience. If you were overly sheltered in childhood, were sick, or had issues that caused you to not have a lot of experiences in life, that can turn into fear, anxiety, and even other problems such as agoraphobia that prevent you from stepping out of your comfort zone.
Whatever the reason for these experiences: overprotective parents, an illness, undiagnosed mental illness, being super-shy… whatever is causing it needs to be addressed so that you can start experiencing small successes and know what if feels like. If you don’t know what that feels like, it’s going to be hard to move forward.
This can be hard to accept for some people, but where you are born makes a huge difference in how you view the world and your own place and potential in it. If you’re born on third base, you can still experience self-doubt if you have controlling parents who see only one way that you can have success, such as following in the family business when you don’t want to.
But most of the time it’s because you were born either in a place without a lot of opportunities or you were born to parents who, while loving, are poor.
Just by reading this, no matter what your situation is, you are getting your eyes opened to the possibilities in the world to escape your circumstances and make the most of your life in a way that makes you thrive. That’s a great thing and can make so much difference.
Anxiety can actually be a symptom of self-doubt, but it goes in a circle. Self-doubt can cause anxiety and if you can find a way to address the anxiety, you may be able to lessen the effects of your self-doubt. Many people who have anxiety describe it as a bad feeling of a million butterflies in their stomachs whenever they think of doing something that makes them uncomfortable.
Often, this feeling is so bad that the person suffers from panic attacks, which can be debilitating. Some people don’t get the panic attacks but they don’t push themselves beyond that feeling of butterflies that they experience as unpleasant.
There is a theory that adrenaline junkies see this same feeling as positive and they seek it out, whereas a person with anxiety uses that same feeling to stop doing anything that causes that feeling. Interesting, isn’t it?
Some anxiety is caused by vitamin deficiencies, so your doctor will likely perform some blood tests and they may recommend you see a psychiatrist who can prescribe medications to help you (at least on a temporary basis) so that you can start experiencing success instead of being blocked from it.
It’s important not to allow this to cause you to stay stuck in your current patterns. The healthiest people seek help and even if you don’t want to take medications, there is help for you to overcome anxiety disorders naturally too.
Often people experience self-doubt simply due to patterns they’ve established since childhood, or in some place in adulthood that sent them down a bad path of experiencing failure or even something traumatic.
For example, everything could have been going fine, then something traumatic happened like a car accident, a death in the family, and so forth. This may start leading you down a path of repeating bad patterns or accepting that your life is just going to be full of failure and you won’t go anywhere. However, this is something you can overcome by changing your patterns.
Then you’ll need to be able to take decisive action that will help you start to experience success in your life that you can build on as you overcome your self-doubt and start believing in yourself. Even now, there are so many reasons that you should believe in yourself. Once you start realizing that, this part should be simple.
Let’s go over some reasons that you should believe in yourself so that you can combat and rid your life of self doubt. The fact is, this something that must come from within and not from other people.
The idea that if you don’t believe in yourself no one else will is very true. That might seem harsh, but it’s a fact that you’ll need to deal with in your quest to develop your new belief in yourself.
Read the information below, take it in, and really believe it. It’s true of everyone, and you are included in this. You were born with everything you need to experience success in life.
Bear these things in mind:
The truth is, if you look from a distance at your problems and put them into relation to the world, how important are they really? If you’ve made some bad choices that have resulted in going through a rough patch emotionally, financially, or spiritually, that’s okay – this is how you grow in life. You grow in life through experiences. It really is how you react to these struggles that make up who you are.
Let’s look at how to overcome negative thoughts so that you can better deal with self-doubt.
It is possible to train your mind to overcome and turn negative thoughts around. Let’s look at some strategies to turn negative thoughts into positive thoughts, or to at least stop the negative thoughts faster when they start.
It will help a lot with overcoming negative thoughts if you put these suggestions into action. You may come up with some of your own too. The point is, you want to turn negative thoughts around so that you can instead experience positivity in your day. That way, you don’t get stuck in a pattern of self doubt.
Now, let’s go over some important ways to deal with self-doubt when it happens. Be assured that even the most successful person works to overcome self-doubt at times. Feeling self-doubt is not the problem. Letting self-doubt control you, make your decisions for you, and rule your life is the problem.
These strategies for dealing with self-doubt will not work for you if you don’t implement them. The issues with self-doubt are so serious that they can make you stuck in a life that you don’t want and aren’t loving. This can lead to anxiety, depression, and that can spiral into a bad situation.
If you really want to experience true joy in life, believe in yourself, and get rid of the debilitating self-doubt you’re experiencing, start implementing now. Don’t delay or make excuses.
Now that you’ve read all of that, you are probably wondering where to start, so use this last part to get yourself organized and ready for change.
If you really want to overcome self doubt and start believing in yourself, it will take action on your part. So, let’s get started.
Using what you’ve learned, it’s important to figure out where your self-doubt began. It may be from childhood, in which case it may take some professional help to overcome it.
It may be something you fell into due to other issues that need to be identified. If you’re in a toxic relationship, for example, you may have to work on getting out of it before you can move forward.
One way to do this is to get out some paper and a writing utensil, and simply write on one side of the paper your strengths, and on the other side your weaknesses.
Then take a highlighter and highlight the things you want to work on to improve your strengths and the things you would like to do better in terms of your weaknesses.
This is important because sometimes self-doubt is caused by anxiety and sometimes anxiety can be caused by vitamin deficiencies.
Get a vitamin panel and tell your doctor that you’re experiencing anxiety.
They’ll know which vitamins to test for to ensure that you can get the information you need.
This may seem silly but eating right and exercising can be one of your first successes and experiences that you can look back to that show that you make good choices.
This small thing can give you the confidence you need to stop having so much self-doubt in your life, building your ability to believe in yourself. If all you do is add more water, more fruits, and veggies and start walking each day, that’s going to help a lot.
Find a good paper journal that you can write in each day before you go to bed and when you first wake up.
It’s good to do this without technology because it’ll be something you can do without causing you to experience extra stress from the blue light in technology that can cause people to experience anxiety and insomnia.
Whether you have a friend you know will help you, or you feel the need to seek professional help in the form of a counselor or life coach, it’s important to find help.
The right help for you is what works. It doesn’t matter what anyone else uses; it only matters what is working for you to build your belief in yourself while you’re letting go of self-doubt.
Set some small goals so that you can experience success. Your small goals might consist only of the things on this list.
But you may have identified some things by reading this that stick out to you as small goals that you can immediately see results from that you want to add.
You can learn all that you want to learn about ridding yourself of self-doubt and building your belief in yourself, but if you don’t act and do something (in other words, implement), you won’t see the success you desire.
Hopefully, you’ve learned a lot of information that is going to help you build your self-image, help you get rid of self-doubt, and move toward believing in yourself again quickly. Remember that nothing is gained without putting one foot in front of the other. But also remember that you are capable, you can do it, and you deserve to do it too. You are worth it.
Self esteem and self doubt affect the way you think and if you are living with doubt you need to start to think differently. If you want to know more about developing a positive success mindset, check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 🙂
Do you have your own website and want to make money with it? Do you have a product that you want to sell? Then you need to set up a sales funnel.
And this is even more important if you plan on selling a ‘big ticket’ item with a high asking price. Read on and let’s break down precisely what a sales funnel is and why it’s such a valuable tool…
A sales funnel is by far the most effective way to get any product – digital or otherwise – to sell. This way, you are attracting the right kinds of visitors, building their trust and engagement with their brand and then selling to them right at the point when they’re most likely to buy.
As a result, your audience is much more receptive and far more accepting of your marketing messages – which makes all the difference to your conversion rates.
This is the big mistake that so many internet marketers make; they don’t realize that it’s ineffective to simply try and sell something ‘cold’ to strangers in the street.
We can illustrate this point by imagining a watch salesman. Imagine that someone came up to you in the street and offered you a $5,000 watch. Would you buy it? Heck no! And here’s why:
Now try to understand that if you have a sales page that is trying to sell a make money ebook, you’re probably doing the exact same thing. It probably looks every bit as shady, and your visitors are just as likely to say ‘thanks but no thanks’.
Think about it: these people know nothing about you. They probably stumbled upon your website by accident, and they have no reason to believe you aren’t just going to collect their money and then run off into the sunset.
They also probably aren’t in the market to make a big purchase right now. And they probably have no particular interest in making money online/getting fitter – beyond the basic interest that everyone has in these topics.
And if that’s all that you’re offering on your site, then the vast majority of people who land on your page are simply going to leave and never come back. Hence, low conversion rates and very low profits.
So what do you do instead? Well, this is where the sales funnel comes in…
With a sales funnel, you are recognizing that you can’t just ‘go in for the kill’ as soon as someone lands on your site. Instead, your interest is going to be retaining them as customers and engaging with them in a meaningful way.
One way you might do this is by getting them to buy something much more inexpensive first – like a short ebook, or in the case of the watch salesman, perhaps a watch strap.
The idea of this is that it’s much easier to sell something small but when you do, you are demonstrating the kind of value you’re capable of delivering and you’re building engagement with the brand. You’ll also be collecting the details of that customer, such that you can market to them further in future.
Your hope then, is that your new customer is going to say ‘that was such a great watch strap, I wonder if they have any good watches?’. Or that they’ll read your free ebook and see mention of your ‘VIP Ultimate Course’ and be interested.
Now they have overcome the trust issue, they know who you are, they know what you represent, and they know that you make good products. So selling something a little more expensive is just a matter of getting them to take that leap.
A sales funnel can be thought of almost as a slide. It can be a series of purchases of increasing value, that inexorably build up momentum and take your visitor closer and closer to the final ‘big’ item.
But that’s not the only thing a sales funnel can be. At the same time, you may wish to include other free stages in your funnel. For example, this might mean that you have a blog, or a mailing list, or a free report. These items work even better because they allow you to capture the people who aren’t yet ready to spend any money with you.
Think of this like the free coffee or the free cake you get outside of Starbucks. You’re just walking past, you’re in a hurry and you’re not ready to buy anything at this point. But then you see a nice snack and it’s completely free, so you think why not? And perhaps while you’re there, you take a flier or a money-off voucher so that you can use those things later on.
For an internet marketer, this is basically what we mean when we talk about content marketing. The objective of content marketing is to get people to become interested in the content you’re sharing, to the point that they will regularly keep checking back of their own volition.
Then maybe they decide they like what you’re offering so much, that they want to subscribe and start hearing more.
Then, once they’re on your mailing list, you might offer them a free seminar. At each stage of the way, they’re becoming more engaged and more interested in your brand – more willing to be marketed to more in the future.
Finally, you then start to offer something a little bigger for a little cash. This might mean an ebook or it might mean a short course. Perhaps it’s an item of clothing! Either way, it’s a small purchase that you need to make as appealing as possible and that will benefit from the fact that your audience now knows you and knows you’re capable of delivering good value.
This is where the concept of the ‘free line’ comes in. The ‘free line’ is the point at which your offerings stop being free and start being charged.
Where you place this free line is in many ways going to define your sales funnel and have perhaps the biggest impact on how successful that funnel is. Some experts on the matter go as far as to suggest that the businesses with the most on offer for free will be the ones that are ultimately the most successful.
The best sales funnels will use the strategies that we just outlined in the previous chapter but will normally organize this into five separate steps (called ‘touches’). Research suggests that to make a sales costs five touches on average and thus, this should be what you aim for.
From the very first ‘touch’ you should be sowing the seeds of your big sale. And one way you can do this is by focussing on the ‘AIDA’ structure. AIDA stands for:
Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action
These are the stages that you need to guide a new visitor through whenever you try and sell a product, and ideally, they should be in this order! Notice how we once again have five steps – which perfectly fits with our five touches.
So to sell a product, you first simply mention it while providing value and not trying to sell. In your second interaction – perhaps a newsletter – you give a little more information but keep it coy. This should hopefully be enough to pique just a little interest.
Finally, in your follow up email or on your sales page, you are going to try and trigger ‘action’. This last action step is where you start to really sell and it’s where you’re going to ram home the idea and make sure that people really want what you’re offering.
This is where you need to understand the basics of persuasive writing and sales and there are a few things to consider here.
The first challenge?
Getting people to actually stop and listen to what you’re saying. These days, we are all constantly in a rush and we all constantly have a million things we need to be doing. This means that we really don’t have time to spend hours reading long passages of text about why X product is so amazing.
So how do you get your visitors to stick around and actually listen to you? One good suggestion is to use a ‘narrative’ structure. This means you’re going to frame your sales pitch like a story and start off by telling your visitors how your product changed your life.
This works well because we are naturally inclined to listen to stories, and we find it very difficult to stop reading them halfway through. That’s why you’ll often stay up all night watching bad quality TV, even though you’re not really enjoying it!
The next tip is to break your text up into lots of sections and to include long detailed headings. Ideally, your sales pitch should be designed such that someone just skimming straight through it would be able to get all the information they need reading the headlines alone.
Using bold or underlined text can help here too, as it allows readers to pick out the key details in any given sentence.
Then, once you’ve done all this, you need to encourage rapid action. You do this by introducing ‘urgency’ and ‘scarcity’ to increase the illusion that the deal is limited time only and that your audience needs to act NOW.
There’s much more to a successful sales funnel than just this and over time, you’ll learn that there’s much more you can do here. The more you tweak and perfect the funnel and the more you understand the psychology that drives sales, the better you’ll be able to increase your conversion rates and drive more traffic to your site.
Then there’s the matter of marketing and finding targeted customers, and the matter of actually building all of these stages using the best available tools.
If you want to learn more about sales funnels and how you can optimise them to convert better, then check out the featured resource below for a free detailed report; download, read it and take action 😊
This is possibly the biggest fear that can keep you tossing and turning at night because again, it’s linked to your survival. If financial fears get out of control, they can develop into an obsession with money or breed toxic emotions like envy or jealousy of people who are wealthier.
Financial fear takes on different forms and shapes depending on your circumstances. You might be living from paycheck to paycheck and barely able to make ends meet. You could be struggling to pay off a student loan or keep up with your mortgage payments.
Financial fears are very valid but again, we often tend to let them take over our minds and keep us in a perpetual state of worry and anxiety. Even people who are financially secure may develop an obsessive fear of losing all they have. In extreme cases, this type of fear can become a phobia.
How it holds you back
Financial fear is a major stressor because it usually plagues you most of the day (and night) rather than in a specific situation. So, its first impact is going to be on your health. High stress levels will keep you feeling fatigued, lifeless, and demotivated.
Your immune system becomes weakened, leaving you more open to illness and just poor health overall. Mentally, financial worries can lead to depression, chronic anxiety, and isolation.
When you’re not at your best physically and mentally, everything in your life suffers. What’s worse, financial fears can keep you trapped in a negative cycle where it’s very difficult to think clearly about solutions – much less act.
Here are 3 quick action steps you can take to stop financial fear from holding you back.
Financial experts recommend putting 10% of your income into a savings account. $10 out of every $100 is a negligible sum and you’ll hardly notice the deduction. However, in a savings account, those small sums very quickly accumulate and can become very substantial over time.
A great idea is to create a separate emergency fund and divide savings between that and your regular savings account. That way, you have something put aside for emergencies like appliances or cars breaking down and other unexpected expenses.
If you stick to a budget and cut down on unnecessary expenses (three cable TV subscriptions and gourmet ice cream are not essentials!) you should be able to live well within your income and put something towards your savings as well.
The thing with budgets is that people seem to think they’re made to be broken! So, be firm and keep a strict eye on overspending.
There are dozens of ways to make extra income online with no cost or very minimal investment. You can set up two or three of these income streams at once. This can easily be managed in your spare time and some have the potential for making very decent money.
Consider affiliate marketing, dropshipping, posting YouTube videos, or publishing an eBook on Kindle. None of these schemes require much experience and with dozens of tutorials on YouTube, you can easily set up your chosen income stream.
Note: These strategies are not going to make you rich overnight or solve all your financial problems. However, they’ll provide you with a small safety cushion that will significantly alleviate your financial fears and give you some peace of mind.
More importantly, these little security nets will relieve your financial anxieties, allowing you to focus on bigger solutions to improve your financial situation.
Closely linked to financial fear is the fear of security, so let’s take a look at that in this article too.
Emotional security, job security, health security, and financial security are extremely important for our mental wellbeing and productivity. Security fears also play on your inner sense of self-worth and, in severe cases, can lead to inferiority complexes and social isolation.
How it holds you back
When you’re insecure in a relationship or don’t feel accepted by your peers, your self-confidence plummets. It’s a no-brainer that low self-confidence will affect the way you think and act in your career, personal and social life.
Health insecurity may be a result of guilt because you know you drink too much, eat unhealthy food and are just careless with your health. It may be due to a history of family health issues as well. As for financial insecurity, we’ve discussed how it can drag you into a cycle of anxiety and worry that stifles your ability to be your best.
Here are 6 quick action steps you can take to stop fear of security from holding you back.
If financial security is preying on your fears, a financial advisor can help you in many ways. He’ll look at your income and expenses and help you create a suitable budget. He’ll suggest investments and other ways to generate more wealth.
A financial advisor will also guide you towards the best way to manage debts if you have them and suggest effective ways to curb overspending. If you’re feeling a bit lost and confused, an expert opinion can dispel many of your financial insecurities.
Financial advisors aren’t just for rich people! They’ll work with anyone including people who are struggling financially, as well as people who are feeling financially insecure. It’s an investment worth making if your insecurity is holding you back.
First and foremost, get out of abusive or destructive relationships immediately. They don’t just hold you back but drag you down to a very bad place – you deserve better. The same goes for exploitative friendships and associations with people who are overly negative and critical. Phase them out of your life.
Strong, healthy relationships greatly strengthen your emotional security. You know that these people can be counted on to give you support, encouragement, and love you for who you are.
In addition to your great relationships, having a strong peer network can be very effective in dispelling emotional insecurity. This can be a peer group related to your career, special interest, or causes you’re passionate about.
Exchanging ideas, sharing experience, and being part of an active peer network can provide you with immense support and encouragement when you need it.
No further explanations are needed here. You know what you’re doing right or wrong health-wise. Take care of yourself!
When you’re healthy, you feel it. In fact, you feel great.
Knowing you’re doing your part to stay fit boosts your confidence about your health.
Quell your job insecurity by staying at the top of your game. Keep growing and learning as much as you can to expand your scope of expertise.
In the case that you do lose your job, you know that you’re perfectly qualified to find a better one!
This can give you a real confidence boost as well as peace of mind, plus this may also help you to perform better in your current role as you are now more relaxed about the future.
Practice your faith or take up meditation to boost your emotional resilience and inner tranquility. Spiritual practices of all kinds are great for building strong emotional health.
When you’re emotionally strong, you’re better able to confront your fears and address them rather than let them take control of your life.
As you can appreciate, changing the way you think can have a huge impact on your life, and if you want to know more about developing an inspirational mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
Some days you may need to create a blog post, a newsletter article, or even a short social media post, and you come up empty.
Maybe you’re not sure what topic to write about. Or maybe you know the topic, but you’re not sure about how to approach the topic (what angle/perspective/slant).
That’s where this article comes in, as it serves as an “idea starter” to help you brainstorm and research fresh topics and angles for your next piece of content.
Ok, let’s jump in…
Defined: Idea starters are basically prompts to help you think about ideas and angles of what to write about.
To that end, go through the following idea starters and write down as many ideas as you can think of for your niche.
TIP: You can go through this list and write down ideas for your niche without having a specific topic in mind. Starting with only your niche will help you generate ideas for dozens of topics within the niche.
However, this list also works well when you do have a specific topic (such as “getting rid of aphids” or “replacing a classic car’s upholstery”), as then you’ll get dozens of ideas for ways to approach these specific topics.
Here are your idea starters – list as many ideas as you can think of for each one:
Next…
Your next step is to do some research to help generate even more ideas. The strategy here is to look at existing content and ideas and then reflect back on the idea-starter questions above to generate additional ideas.
I’ll first give you a list of existing content to review, and then I’ll provide you with examples of how to implement this strategy:
Let’s work through an example…
Let’s suppose you go to your competitor’s blog, and you find an article with 10 tips for losing weight. You can look at the article as a whole, as well as each individual tip, and run through your idea starters.
“X Commons Myths You’ve Heard About _______” becomes “Top Five Common Myths You’ve Heard About Losing Weight.” You can then turn a positive tip on the list into a negative myth (that you debunk).
Let me give you a specific example…
Let’s suppose one of the tips is on the topic of eating multiple smaller meals per day to boost metabolism and provide the body with a steady supply of food to fuel one’s activities.
You can turn this idea around to become a myth. E.G., “Eat Two or Three Big Meals Per Day” is the myth, and then you can share what to do instead (eat six small meals per day).
Need more ideas? Then your next step is to use a tool to generate additional ideas.
One of the best tools to use is BuzzSumo.com. Not only does this tool give you topic and angle ideas, it also presents ideas for content that’s already popular in your niche.
Start by entering your broad keywords into BuzzSumo, such as “gardening” or “dog training.” Then write down any ideas that spark your interest.
Then…
Enter broad keywords from OTHER niches.
For example, if your market is dog training, then enter completely different market and niche searches such as:
And similar big, evergreen markets and topics. For each market or topic you feed into the tool, you’ll get dozens of ideas. In turn, you can take these ideas and apply them to your own niche.
For example, let’s suppose you feed the keywords “weight loss” into the tool, and you get a result such as “It’s Never Too Late to Start Losing Weight.”
You can then take this topic and bring it to your niche (dog training). E.G., “It’s Never Too Late to Start Training Your German Shepherd.”
Or let’s suppose you enter “gardening” and get the result: “10 Gardening Ideas that Work Even If You Don’t Have a Green Thumb.”
You can brainstorm and apply that to your niche, like this: “10 Dog Training Ideas That Work Even If You’re a Complete Dog-Training Newbie.”
Let’s wrap this up…
Now that you have a list of idea starters and access to research and tools that can help you generate even more ideas, your next step is simple: start brainstorming 😊
By the way, if you really want to know more about the power of content marketing and blogging, you can take a look at the Rapid Blogging Blueprint training course or if you just want a few pointers for now you can grab the featured resource below for a free detailed blogging report; download, read it and take action 😊
Former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said in a speech, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” If you take the statement literally, it doesn’t really make sense because you can’t really be afraid of fear.
What Roosevelt was trying to say is that fear is a crippling emotion that can hold back nations and individuals from achieving greatness. In that sense, the consequences of fear can be terrifying.
Here are a couple of the most common fears and a few tips on how to overcome them.
Risk is related to a perceived loss resulting from an action. Oftentimes, there’s also a potential gain but we tend to magnify the loss while minimizing the gains. The fear of taking risks is a very strong primal fear related to our survival instinct where our prehistoric ancestors were surrounded by peril. Taking risks could mean getting eaten by wild animals or some other horrible death.
This fear remains very strong in us and is the first emotion that overcomes us when we think of taking important action.
How it holds you back
Let’s say you want to start your own business. You have a great idea for a useful product or service that’s scalable. There’s an audience for it and your initial market research tells you it will be in demand. You’re very excited. Then, the fear of risk kicks in and your mind starts bombarding you with ‘what if?’
What if the idea’s not so good after all? What if you take out a loan and can’t repay it? What if the product doesn’t sell? What if the market collapses? What if there’s a nuclear war and you lose everything?
Your fear ends up holding you back from, doing something that can have some real benefits for you. So, you ditch the idea and decide to stay on in a job you hate that’s stifling your potential and ambition. You convince yourself that being miserable is safer than failing miserably!
Now, consider the alternative: you realistically assess the risks involved, plan for them and start your own business. You embark on an exciting journey when you become your own boss, take control of your life, and grow a super successful business. This is just one example of how fear of risk can hold you back from great things.
Highly successful people have a unique mindset. They don’t shy away from risk but rather, they see it as a challenge that can always be overcome, and the reward always outweighs the risk. That’s what makes successful people great! You can develop this mindset and conquer your fear of taking risks with the following strategies:
Identify your desired outcome. Let’s stick with the example of starting your own business. Realistically and honestly assess the risks related to the outcome.
In this case, they could be using your savings for capital, taking out a loan and changing interest rates or liabilities or hazards related to your product. I would also include the risk of not making any income from the business for a few months until it’s up and running.
Weigh the desired outcome (establishing a successful business) against the risks involved and honestly assess the possibility of these risks really happening. You’ll most likely find that the outcome or goal is worth the risks.
Assessing possible risks and putting them into proportion usually shows you that they’re not as bad as you imagined, not likely to happen or if they do, can be managed.
When you’ve identified all the possible risks, create a risk management plan for each one. This will give you tremendous peace of mind and confidence because you’re mentally prepared and your back is covered.
Having a risk management plan or a plan B will arm you with the tools to immediately take action to mitigate or eliminate risks with the least possible losses. Oftentimes, many of the imagined risks never come to pass but having a plan B is one of the most powerful ways to break your fear of risk.
Always define your goal or goals clearly and factor in the potential risks. Include sub-goals of steps you need to take to avoid risk. Your goal map should include benchmarks or timeframes where you stop and assess your progress to ensure that all is on track and to make modifications if something seems to be heading towards a risk.
OK, let’s move onto the second fear that may be holding you back from the success you desire (and deserve).
Failure can have tangible repercussions such as material or financial loss as well as emotional consequences such as the loss of reputation, respect, and self-pride. In most cases, the emotional associations come into play more to hold us back.
Failure is associated with negative qualities like incompetence, inexperience, poor skills, low intelligence, and other qualities that cause emotional distress.
How it holds you back
Quite simply, nobody wants to be regarded as a loser. This is why the fear of failure leads to three negative and debilitating habits:
What’s more, the fear of failure saps your self-confidence. The more it keeps you stuck in place, the more you become convinced that you don’t have what it takes to do any better. It’s a vicious and very crippling cycle.
Highly successful people have a unique mindset. Firstly, they don’t acknowledge the word ‘failure’ but rather, refer to it as a setback. Secondly, they see setbacks as challenges that can always be overcome. That’s what makes successful people great! You can develop this mindset and conquer your fear of failure with the following strategies:
We’re often ashamed of our past failures and avoid reflecting on them. But reframing past failures can decrease your fears. Firstly, remind yourself that you may have made some very big mistakes in the past – but so has everyone else on the planet.
Secondly, reflect on how your mistakes are part of who you are today. For better or worse, they’ve shaped your character and they’ve made you wiser and stronger. Finally, reflect on the lessons learned and how they’ve helped you avoid making the same mistakes again.
Reframe and reflect on your past failures in this way and you’ll begin to see that failure can have a positive effect.
These can be skills related to your career, tech skills, or communication and listening skills to improve your relationships, leadership skills and so on. The goal is to give your self-confidence a big boost.
Having a varied toolset of skills and expertise gives you the confidence to be more proactive and eager to take initiatives to improve yourself and your life. This strategy is a huge fear of failure buster.
Reflect on your special skills and talents that make you unique from everyone else. This is a great exercise to engage in when you’re procrastinating or overthinking.
As you can appreciate, changing the way you think can have a huge impact on your life, and if you want to know more about developing an inspirational mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
