I have wanted to produce an accessible workbook on confidence for some time now. I had plenty of ideas, workshop content and knew what I wanted to say, but with all the other balls I was juggling, there just wasn’t time. So I made a conscious decision to opt out of social media last year in order to free up time to write.
I think a lot of advice nowadays is all about ‘hacks’ – shortcuts I guess to help us fit more into busy lives and optimise and efficiency-edit ourselves. Personally I find a lot is lost by squeezing more things in and trying to do them more quickly so we can free up time to…squeeze more in! Whilst I value self improvement, I don’t think it’s to be found by squashing and squeezing, but by making space and being ruthless about what to prioritise. Recognising that actually its impossible to have more than 1 or 2 projects on the go at the same time as keeping life happening has been key for me in getting things done, and if there isn’t time to be immersed in the process, then I don’t think the deep thinking and deep learning is possible. Even 5 minute jobs become onerous if there are 20 plus of them to do.
So, last year you may have noticed (or possibly not!) that my sporadic social media posts became totally absent. Any time I was tempted to get on social media, I channelled into writing. And then when I had a draft I was happy with, I enlisted the help of someone with way more graphics and visual skills than me to turn it into something user friendly and welcoming. I’m pretty happy with the result, and showcased it at the recent Women’s Climbing Symposium in Bristol a couple of weeks ago. It should be available in my online shop soon, but you can just message me if you’d like a copy sooner at a slightly reduced rate.
All this to say however, like any learning process, the workbook starts you off, but you should not think of it as a hack, shortcut or magic bullet. Confidence takes time to develop, and allowing yourself time to read AND practice AND reflect will pay dividends. Think about how you are going to allow sufficient time to invest in your …investment! What will you need to stop doing to make this possible? And do you have the right kind of network around you to support your learning? I’ve written a post recently on Insta and FB about how vital my climbing buddies have been to me in improving over the last couple of years, not because they push me in any way, but more because they allow me to turn up in whatever state, they are consistent and I totally trust them. They create the conditions where we can experiment, make mistakes, ask questions, and not know the answers. We can mess things up, laugh at ourselves, and then try and fail again and again, and still feel like its been a successful session.