Increase Your Confidence Part 1 – Celebrate Your Wins

Confidence is something that I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember. It’s something that used to be ridiculously low. These days, I’m pretty confident in many ways. That being said, there are many areas in which I know my confidence is still very much lacking.

I think confidence is so important for our health and happiness. I know when my confidence is low, so is my self-esteem. When my self-esteem is low I’m just not that happy. So right now working on my confidence is a top priority.

To cut a long story short one of my favourite YouTubers Aileen from Lavendaire posted a video about her confidence story. One of the key things she talks about is collecting a bank of wins. Obviously, having confidence it’s a bit more complex than that (hence why this is just part 1 of a series on confidence), but it’s a key component in improving your self-esteem.

One random day on the 14th July I found out my DA had jumped, that was a win. Now for those of you that don’t have a blog or website that may not mean a lot, but basically the better your DA (domain authority) the better chance you’ve got at being found on Google hence helping your blog career. So I decided to celebrate it.

It was a win because when I started I didn’t even know what a DA meant. Then it was stuck on one for months (which is as pretty low as it can get). Now after only 9 months of blogging my blog is finally starting to be found and making waves in the massive ocean of what is Google.

It’s easy to forget these things on days when things don’t seem like are going to plan. So I decided to set myself a challenge as a way of celebrating the wins and thus increasing my confidence.

The challenge is to find a little win every day and to build up my bank of wins. I decided I’d do it for a whole month and log it.

So without further ado here are my celebrations for a whole month.

Celebrations:

14th July: DA jumps up ♥
15th July: Finally did my media pack.
16th July: Started a new Instagram strategy.
17th July: Pushed myself to do a 5K run when I really didn’t feel like it.
18th July: Revamped website.
19th July: Tax return started.
20th July: Facebook page reaches 400 followers.
21st July:  Tax return submitted.
22nd July: A much-needed heart to heart was had.
23rd July: Had a perfect family day.
24th July: Brand told me they really liked my work.
25th July: Huge spike in blog traffic.
26th July: Twitter competition starts to take off.
27th July: Amazing support for my most important post yet.
28th July: DA went up again.
29th July: 1st bloggers meet up.
30th July: New collaboration opportunity came up.
31st July: Best monthly blog stats ever.

1st August:   Plucked up courage to start chatting on Instagram stories.
2nd August: Reached 1000 followers on Twitter.
3rd August: Twitter competition ends and was a success with 278 entries.
4th August: Started writing an important Instagram blog post.
5th August: Started working on my 1st crowdsourcing post.
6th August: Found a creative way to get photos for a taboo topic.
7th August: New items to review.
8th August: Organised with other bloggers Bournemouth meetups.
9th August: Offers for prizes for giveaways.
10th August: Amazing beach day/oceanarium.
11th August: Started planning more details for meetups.
12th August: Lovely feedback on my latest blog post.
13th August: Really fun family day out.

By the end of the month, my confidence increased loads. Taking the time every day to find a win really helped me see the positives. There were days it was really hard, but I learnt you can always find a win.

A win can simply just be getting a job done that you’ve been putting off because lets be honest beating procrastination is without a doubt a win.

I looked to find the majority of my wins within my career (as that’s where I lack confidence), but some days my wins were family stuff because I didn’t get anything done career-wise, but I did spend time with the family. That is a win for me as in my definition of success my career allows me to have a good family life ‘yalance’.

I’d challenge everyone to find the win in the everyday stuff because you will feel better and more confident for it. If you decide to celebrate the everyday things then do let me know. FYI you can tag me on Instagram and Twitter as I love seeing people work on their confidence.

To look back on everything you’ve achieved for a month is a great feeling.  I know I’d of easily forgot about all these little things without writing them down. It’s so easy to focus on all the stuff we haven’t achieved, but if you can shift your thinking to everything you have achieved then that’s where the magic happens. You go from thinking you’ve achieved nothing with your day, to looking back and thinking wow I did a lot this month. Remembering the achievements and all the good times is a massive confidence booster.

I’ll be back soon with part 2 to increase your confidence as this is simply the start of it.

This post is part of my Wellness Wednesday weekly feature, for more Wellness Wednesday posts click here. Every Wednesday there is a new wellness post at 7 pm. Update: this feature no longer runs but there are still loads of blog posts here.