Self-doubt killed more dreams than failure ever did

Indulge me one more time, while talk once more of this self doubt that's plaguing me at the moment. I will resume focus on the big wide world shortly, but there seems to be a lot of it about at the moment, so I figure I'll get it off my chest and maybe give someone else a lift in process.

I wrote in a panic my feelings of self doubt and insecurity prior to attending the blogging workshop. Coincidently there were 2 other posts that day on similar feelings. After the workshop, very successful blogger, Interiors Addict,  wrote about her self doubt; she'd been a panellist, and had appeared super confident. She had alluded to it during the masterclass, but I assumed that was to make us small fry feel better about ourselves. Her surprising post blew me away!

So why is our perception so different to how we are perceived?

And can we ever change that?

It reared it's head for me again (thus the self-indulgent post), when I won the session with Tweaky.com in the google analytics webinar, kindly put on by Nuffnang (if you missed, it was brilliant and now on utube!). To win you needed to come up with the strangest search terms to find your blog - so it was a no brainer I'd win. (Please people, said in a George Costanza voice). I was over the moon, as I really have no idea of all the things I could be using the analytics for.

Then about two hours later it hit me. I don't want them looking at my stats! They were talking in the 1000 views per day, and I'm not really in that league! Even I can see that it's ridiculous to be worried about it, and yet I am. I feel I should apologise for wasting his time...It's actually making me feel a little sick.

While travelling around The Lounge that night,  I saw a saying on a travel blog, (suitcases & sippycups I think): Self-doubt killed more dreams than failure ever did. At the blogging workshop, I learned that I would have self doubt but to just keep writing through that. So with a new mantra, I will try to hold my head high and remember the point is to get the most out of the session, not worry about what people think of me.

If I keep saying this stuff out loud (to the webworld), I'm hoping I'll start to believe it. If nothing else, it commits me to a course of action. Once I hit publish there's no backing out of it.

I will finish with that lovely saying of Maya Angelou and as an aside to those that did do the webinar, I've been eating dumplings for lunch every day since!

As Maya Angelou said "If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be."

Thanks for your patience, we'll start solving the problems of the world next week and stop talking ME, ME, ME endlessly. Also First of the Month fiction is back up this Friday!

Linking up with Essentially Jess for IBOT! Swing by and see what everyone else is discussing...