How To Supercharge Your Self-Belief in Your Creative Writing Abilities

What’s the one factor that limits how much you achieve with your writing more than anything else? The single element that determines exactly how much of your creative writing potential you fulfill?

The answer has nothing to do with how talented you are. It’s about what you believe about your abilities that’s crucial.

So here is your 5-step plan for supercharging your self-belief to new heights, and helping you reach your writing potential more consistently:

1. Be honest with yourself. What do you REALLY believe about your creative abilities? Be completely open with yourself. Do you feel that you’re a writer with a significant talent that can write whatever you feel like writing to a rewarding level?

   Or do you more often wonder if you have any writing talent at all? Do thoughts like “I’m just an imposter, I’m not a real writer” dominate your beliefs? The first step is to get all those negative and sabotaging beliefs out in the open where you can see them!

2. List your negative and limiting beliefs. Take a large sheet of paper and write in the center “My limiting beliefs.”  Then write around this any beliefs you have about your writing abilities and about your creativity that you know hold you back.

   Think about those you personally apply to yourself as well as more general beliefs about writing. For example, you might think “Only very few “chosen” people have writing talent worth exploring.”  List them all.

3. Ask: What would I be without these beliefs? Now you have your limiting beliefs where you can see them. Already their hold will be weakened because they don’t like being thrown out in the cold light of day!

   Next, for each limiting belief, ask, “What would I be without this limiting belief? If it was impossible for me to have this thought, how would I be different? How would it affect my ability to write freely?”

4. Turn the limiting beliefs around. Step 3 starts to open your mind to how your life will be when you let go of some of these limiting beliefs. This next step will take that further.

   For each limiting belief, turn it around into a positive statement and write it on a new sheet. For example “I’m not a real writer,” you could turn around to become “I have as much right to be a writer as anyone. I have my own unique writing talents that I enjoy exploring...”

5. New replaces old. You’ll now have two sheets of paper, one with all your limiting beliefs, and one with new positive versions of each of them. You don’t need the first limiting beliefs anymore, so rip this sheet up into as many tiny pieces as you can.

   Now pin your new positive beliefs up somewhere prominent where you can see them. At least once a day, read through your new positive beliefs 5 to 10 times. The more often you do this, the more quickly you’ll absorb them.

Follow this powerful 5-step technique and you’ll have an invaluable set of beliefs to live your creative writing life by.  Be vigilant and if you notice any limiting beliefs creeping in again, write them down, turn them around, then rip them up!