"Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself"
- Coco Chanel

Gaining Confidence with Your Online Presence

Some people believe you are born with gifts and talents. If you can play the piano, it's said you're born with it. If you're really intelligent, it's said you're born with it. If you're creative, it's said you're born with it.

I don't believe that's case.

Creativity doesn't come naturally to everyone, even if they know it's the industry they want to work in. It certainly doesn't come naturally to me. It takes effort, dedication and hard work to succeed in something you may not be natural at.

Practice makes perfect - and the more you practice something, the better you get at it. It's like a natural progression. Nobody discovers their creativity or skill immediately. It doesn't just happen.

You're not born knowing you're going to be a brilliant writer, photographer, designer, or teacher - you learn this along the way. You don't realise you have a gift for helping people, teaching people, or creating until you're actually doing it. You discover this through practicing, experimenting and expanding your confidence.

As you do this, you grow. Your creativity grows and your confidence grows.

It's exactly the same for your online presence.

A lack of confidence comes with a lack of belief.

You believe you can't do certain things or worse - you aren't good enough to do certain things.

If you believe this, or feel you aren't really confident with your presence online, all you need to do is experiment to find out where your skills lie. You just haven't found them yet.

This can be difficult with all the rules and noise of the internet lately. There's always someone telling us to do something. When we try it out and it doesn't work, we don't think that it isn't right for us - we think that we've failed. So our confidence decreases.

I spoke to my community on Monday about the importance of doing things for yourself. This helps to increase your confidence as you become more sure of yourself.

It's exactly the same with your online presence - if you're doing things and implementing the right strategies for you, it'll show.

Confidence comes with being yourself.

It comes with practice and sharing. To be confident with your online presence means to be absolutely sure of why you're doing what you're doing. Why you're building a presence online in the first place.

You take the chance that some people might not like you and some will. You take the chance that sometimes you might fail and sometimes you might succeed.

But what's important is that you understand and appreciate your values. You're confident enough to believe in them, no matter what happens.

This doesn't mean there won't be moments of self-doubt. There always will.

But the drive to fulfil your potential online is even greater than that fear.

You're the only one who can believe in yourself enough to give you this creative confidence.

There will always be people out there who are better than you at something. It's life.

But that doesn't mean you can't be the best at what you do in your own way. Because what you're doing is unique.

This world is big. It can be so easy to get swept up in it all. But if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got.

If you don't even try to improve your belief you won't move forward.

But you deserve to have that creative confidence to fuel your belief in your online presence.

How To Build Your Confidence Online:

Keep track of your progress. Remember where you came from and where you are now. Document everything. The projects you create, the ideas you have, the community you build - everything.

Keep a gratitude journal. Every day, write down three things that you're grateful for and three things that went well. Looking back over it will help your confidence to grow by looking at what you've accomplished.

Don't fear being yourself. It's what this is all about. Ultimately, you started your online presence and your blog for you. That should be at the core of everything you do. Don't be afraid of that.

Learn from your mistakes. We all make them and they can help you more than you know. Build on them, strengthen your skills from them and let your confidence continue to grow.

Learn what you don't want. This can sometimes be more powerful than knowing what you want. Identifying what you don't want gives you power and confidence that you won't get anywhere else.

Keep creating and building. Things are always changing. There's always something new we have to learn. But when you're building your online presence and creating things to help it grow, remember to only do what you want to do. Do what works for you, what fits with your lifestyle and what you believe in.

Ultimately our confidence online comes from one place and one place only...