Do you have a love/hate relationship with your writing? Is your website lurking in a corner of the internet, unloved, unvisited, un-updated and un-promoted?

When you look around at the marvellous and creative web efforts of others, do you ever catch yourself thinking, “I should do something like that?” or “I should be doing that instead of this?”

Here’s a two-part exercise that’s just one way to get over it and find the confidence to promote the site you’ve somehow lost faith in.

Have a Pity-party

Have yourself a thorough pity-party.

Write down everything you hate about your own work. Do you feel as though everything you write has already been written a hundred times before? Is it simplistic, plain, unsure of itself, unoriginal or just stupid? Yes, sometimes a vague “that’s stupid” comes to mind without any good reason. So write it down. Is your design awkward, clumsy or unsophisticated? Are your colors and design too last year, or your written pieces too long, too short, or just don’t seem to be saying anything? Get it all out on paper. Make a long list of everything that’s wrong with the work you’ve done so far.

Have a Hate Party

Turn all that negativity towards a different site.

Go online and find a big, popular, site you think is rubbish. Really, go on. Look around the internet at the millions of sites that people have worked on. Find one you really don’t rate very highly. It doesn’t have to be on the same subject that you’re working on; anything will do. The only rule when choosing a site to hate is that it has to be big, and it has to have a reasonable following – not huge, just a few followers. How do you know if it has a following? Well, you could click on any Twitter or FB buttons and see how many followers the author has. Or look at the Linkedin profile, if there is one, and check out any professional connections. Or just look for comments to blog posts.

Make a new list on a new page. Why don’t you like it? Is it the colours, the layout, the content, the attitude or language used in the writing, the opinions expressed, a vague feeling of contempt, or annoyance, because you think you could do it better given half a chance? Or maybe you think the content is basic, shallow or superficial, or overly technical and complicated. Or is the content trivial vacuous, the subject matter fluffy and pointless. Whatever the reason, write it down. Tear it to shreds. Have a hate-party on the anonymous site.

Compare the Two

Chances are you’ll find that what you wrote about in your pity-party are similar to the things you wrote in your hate-party.

That doesn’t mean that both lists are true. It actually means that both lists are false.

I’m sure you see where I’m going here. Opinions are subjective. What some like, others loathe.

So it follows that if someone can build a success out of something you think is rubbish, you can build a success out of something someone else will call rubbish, especially if that someone happens to be you.

When it comes to judging your own work, you’re really not the best person to take much notice of.

Take Courage

You are you and you can’t be anyone else. It really doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about your site. Some people will love it and some will hate it. Some will rate it and some will think it’s a waste of time – just like with the big site that you hated but others loved.

It really doesn’t matter.

Look back at the site you hated. Who would have thought something like that could be so popular. And yet plenty of people seem to like it don’t they?

Finding the confidence to ‘put yourself out there’ can be hard. But realising that your work is equally as valid and important as the next person’s is half the battle.

(image credit)