🪧What’s Holding You Back? Learn to Overcome Your Confidence Triggers
Confidence - Week 2
How well do we know ourselves?
The fear of writing a book nearly stopped me from doing the thing I am now most proud of: sharing my unique connection to Jane Austen's legacy with the world.
Growing up at Chawton House, the ancestral estate where my fifth great-aunt, Jane Austen, lived and wrote, profoundly shaped who I am. Despite this, I never thought I would be a published author. Jane taught me to "keep to my own style and go on in my own way.", and my pathway was business.
My path took an unexpected turn in 2014, just before my 44th birthday, when I was persuaded that my firsthand knowledge and memories of the last 18 years of Chawton House as the family home of the Austen Knight family were an important addition to the history of our ancestral home and Jane Austen’s family.
I decided to write a book about my childhood in Chawton, where Jane herself lived and wrote; it is the heart of her literary legacy. My book would be non-fiction, but storytelling nonetheless. Jane Austen is a hard act to follow, and to say I was scared of writing a book would be an understatement.
A year later, I had a few random ‘braindumps’ of different childhood memories in Chawton, our traditions, bits of family history…but no outline, no narrative, and no idea of what my book was going to be.
I only had one day a week to write, Sundays. I procrastinated for weeks on end, distracted by domestic chores that suddenly seemed important. My house was cleaner than ever, but that wasn’t going to get my story told. My confidence as an author was evaporating, and I didn’t know if I would ever get my story published.
I realized that I was paralyzed with fear.
This started me on a path of self-reflection. What was I so scared of? Everyone thought it was a good idea; I had lots of Facebook friends in the Austen community cheering me on. I’d spent a lot of my career storytelling in marketing and communications. I was a strong speaker and presenter and confident in my abilities. Why couldn’t I do this?
I had to be truly honest with myself. There are so many things we tell ourselves that aren’t true, they are just easier to believe, like “I’m just not the sort of person who can write a book.”
I had to ask myself uncomfortable questions, challenge my first answers, and, at times, admit things to myself I wished weren’t true.
Over a couple of weeks of self-reflection, I identified three core fears:
The last book written about Chawton by a family member was Montagu Knight’s Chawton Manor and Its Owners, A Family History in 1911, and that is still read today. Whatever I put out there would be there forever and would likely define my place in history. I had no illusions of being a polished writer—it was my first book—but it had to be good enough to honor my family name, history, and ancestors, including Jane herself.
I didn’t want to embarrass my living family. My parents have volunteered at Chawton House for decades, and it wasn’t fair for me, now living in Australia, to upset their lives.
I didn’t want to alienate the wider Knight family—my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I wasn’t writing as a spokesperson for the family. Jane & Me was going to be my personal experience of it all, nothing more, and I wasn’t going to write anything that I thought would embarrass anyone. But I had read stories of memoirs that tore families apart.
Understanding what I was afraid of helped me put a plan together to mitigate my fears, allow me to make progress, and get to the finish line. My plan included improving my skills as a writer, getting the right honest but constructive feedback and positive support, fact-checking with my family and research, asking permission to share personal information (such as my father and brother’s dyslexia), and having my parents read the final draft before it went to print (which resulted in only two small amendments).
Jane & Me: My Austen Heritage was published in 2017 and is my greatest achievement. I had never experienced that level of fear, such a loss of confidence, and I overcame it. It has been well received by the Austen community, has taken me around the world to speak at events, and has brought me closer to my aunts, uncles, and cousins who I hadn’t seen for many years.
The Austen Pathway starts with Managing Your Mindset: Confidence. The ability to maintain a mindset that is conducive to your motivation, focus, and productivity is the foundation of progress and success.
Being able to step out of yourself and take an honest look at your confidence behavior and what drives it enables you to deal with the truth and make plans that will genuinely create change in your life.
In my last podcast, I talked about the fundamentals of confidence: what it is, what it isn’t, what impacts and supports confidence, and how to use my 3 P’s (Am I Present, Am I Positive, Am I Productive?) to get a better understanding of how confident you truly are. You can listen to that HERE.
Today’s exercise is to draw your own Confidence Psyche.
Here are the instructions:
On a sheet of paper, landscape, draw a line down the middle.
To the left of the line, draw your most confident self.
On the far left of the sheet, write what you Believe, Think and Feel, how you Behave when you are feeling confident, and the Outcomes.
To the right of the line, draw your least confident self.
On the far right of the sheet, write what you Believe, Think and Feel, how you Behave when you lose your confidence, and the Outcomes.
Write your Triggers at the top - what impacts your confidence.
Write your Restorers at the bottom - what improves your confidence.
This is my confidence psyche, as an example:
We are all wired differently. Your confidence psyche will be different and personal to you. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers. No one is going to see them (unless you want to discuss it with me in a coaching session). Don’t write what you think the answers should be, or be superficial in your thinking. It may take a few days, even a few weeks to tune into your true feelings, and is something you should never stop doing.
Tuning into your own confidence psyche will help you formulate ways to dial up the Restorer influences on your confidence and reduce the triggers that threaten your progress.
Make sure you are subscribed so you don’t miss next week! I will be talking about the most common threats to confidence; managing disappointment and failure, dealing with negative feedback, and what to do with negative influencers in your life.
Have a good week!
Caroline
Your book sounds fascinating! I really want to read it now!