How to Overcome Doubt (Business Blog Enemy #2)

July 1st, 2008 by Easton Ellsworth

Should I stay or should I go? - The Clash

Ever asked that question?

Welcome to Part 3 of a 24-part series on using the Visionary Blogging method to overcome business blogging challenges and develop successful business blogger attributes.

So far we’ve covered Enemy #1 (fear) and Ally #1 (courage). Now we’ll talk about doubt and how to overcome it so you can have more professional blogging success.

What is doubt?

Doubt is a feeling of uncertainty or a hesitation to believe. When you doubt, you still haven’t made up your mind. This can lead to procrastination, distraction, indecision, skepticism, self-defeating habits and failure.

4 Types of Doubt that Professionals with Blogs Face

1. Doubting yourself. Many professional bloggers doubt themselves. Maybe you do. I know I do (hey, I amen’t perfect!). Self-doubt is normal in blogging. You’re using a new medium with new tools to communicate with people in new ways. That’s sometimes scary. You may not yet have the knowledge or skills that you feel you need.

2. Doubting others. Doubting other people is also common in blogging. You may feel uncertain that your blog readers care about your blog or your business. You may not trust an individual who is supposed to assist you in your blogging efforts. Or maybe you have doubts about other bloggers in your niche.

3. Doubting ideas. Is that news item true? Is that blog improvement advice worth taking? Should you believe that x will happen?

4. Doubting consequences. Will this choice lead to that outcome? Is your blog going to suffer the same fate as the other guy’s because you made the same mistake? Is it going to succeed based on the plan you currently have in place?

Doubt can be a good thing, of course. You shouldn’t instantly believe everything people tell you, for example. But that’s not debilitating. It’s protective. You have to doubt some things in order to preserve yourself and your business. But you shouldn’t be content just to doubt. You should always seek the truth.

5 Ways Doubt Can Hurt Your Business Blog

1. You doubt that a certain tool will work on your blog. You never get around to testing it and eventually lose out on a lot of revenue it could have generated.

2. You doubt that your blog will prove to be worth the time and money and energy. This pretty easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

3. You doubt that customers and visitors like your blog. It shows in your writing and your audience is quickly turned off.

4. You doubt that you can make your blog stand out in the crowd. So you wait to have a blog design guru look at it. Months pass and you lose dozens of potential business leads because of your bland look.

5. You doubt your ability as a blog writer/designer/mentor/marketer/etc. So you stop posting for a while and your blog loses momentum.

5 Steps to Overcome Business Blogging Doubts

Here’s a simple five-step process for overcoming doubt. Follow this method and you’ll become a stronger, more successful business blogger.

Step 1: Acknowledge your doubt. (See Awareness.) Think about it. Pinpoint it. Write it down. Pay attention to it. What’s stopping you?

Step 2: Analyze your doubt. (See Focus.) Spend some time on it. Chew on it. What’s the worst thing about it? The best thing? The easiest thing? The hardest thing? When does it flare up? How does it affect your performance? How important is it to resolve or eliminate?

Step 3: Decide how to resolve your doubt. (See Discernment.) Sit down and plan. Make decisions. This is the crux of the doubt-destroying process. Choose a path that you think will lead to crushing your doubt.

Step 4: Prepare to beat a doubt-squashing path. (See Imagination.) Get advice from blogging friends and your blog readers. Remember your strengths and blessings. Give it some creative thought. Anticipate your battles with doubt. No doubt that doubt will rear its ugly head again – so be ready to slice that head clean off.

Step 5: Follow through. (See Diligence.) Watch the bat hit the ball, as they say. Stick to your plan. If research is required, hit the books. If confronting someone is necessary, call ‘em out. If you’ve gotta take a blog reader survey, bust out the SurveyMonkey. Do it. Do it. Do it.

No Doubt: You Can Do It

Cut through the fog of fear by listening to your intuition and discover your true passions. Trust that by following your passions, people, places, things and circumstances will appear almost magically to supply you with what you need. - Stephen Hopson

Conquering doubt is the key to overcome negative thinking.

Until you overcome doubts about your blog, you can’t succeed. You may not even survive.

Doubt stops you from listening to your heart. Left unchecked, it can eventually kill your drive to succeed.

But doubt has one great weakness: It can only survive in the mind.

It’s all in your head. It’s up to you. No one else can make you doubt or stop doubting. Ultimately, you have to decide to stop being a doubter.

Decide to trust. Decide to doubt. Decide to believe. Believe something isn’t right, or believe it is, or believe you should remain on the fence until you get more information – but don’t just sit and doubt.

I promise that as you follow the advice in this article, you will vanquish your business blogging doubts and enjoy more success as a blogger and as a professional. Please take it to heart.

Piece of cake.

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In the next post in this series, we’ll discuss the opposite of doubt. Do you know what it is?

Let’s Talk About Doubt, Baby

What’s the biggest doubt you’re facing right now as a blogger? What methods have you found to be effective at erasing doubt? Got any tips for other bloggers?

photo credit: My Buffo, giuvax, pingnews.com, desi.italy

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