5 Amazing Tips To Boost Your Self-Confidence As A Freelancer

[A collaboration post – all thoughts are my own.]

As a freelancer, you work for yourself, and that’s why you definitely need to boost your self-confidence as a freelancer. Although freelancing can be a nice solution for someone who loves working from home, it can be a difficult path to work.

As a freelancer for three years, I felt it; one area that many freelancers struggle with is keeping their confidence levels up. As most freelancers do not have someone to act as a cheerleader, they are ultimately responsible for valuing their professional successes. For many of us, feeling confident is not that easy.

Your self-confidence is created by lots of different factors: personal experiences, upbringing, personality, and even possibly genetics. In good times, when your freelance life is rolling along wonderfully, confidence lets you enjoy your work and your life more. When problems arise, self-confidence is one of the things that can make the situation easier to handle.

Fortunately, your level of confidence is not permanent. Even if you’re having a bad day or a totally insecure person, you can become someone who has a lot of confidence. And if you struggle to keep your self-confidence as a freelancer, consider the following tips on boosting your confidence levels.

Create a schedule

A freelancing career offers a lot of freedom and flexibility, that’s why I start working freelance. Nothing can buy your freedom to do something you love or flexibility doing something from anywhere you want in the world. As much as I love being a freelancer, as humans are creatures of habit, a schedule gives us an easy solution to manage confidence levels.

By sticking to your daily habits, tasks will be completed on time, thus reducing your stress from deadlines and boosting self-confidence in workload management. When I have a big project, like subtitling tv series 60 minutes per day, the number of tasks can be overwhelming and daunting. So I try to break them up into smaller pieces; meeting these smaller goals will help you boost your self-confidence.

Ditch the toxic people

It can’t be helped, but we all have people in our lives who will put us down to make themselves feel better. The kind of ‘people’ who seemingly have your best interests at heart, but are bitching about you behind your back. Hopefully, you don’t have anyone in your personal or freelance life who does that. If you do, stay away from them the best you can.

If you have to be around them, don’t listen to what they say. Hearing negative things about yourself will make it harder to increase self-confidence. As long as you continue to hang around with them, you are disrespecting yourself and blocking happiness.

If your family and friends dis your freelance lifestyle, or simply just being a blogger like me, do not discuss your business with them. Period.

If they ask, say something about how it’s going great and you love freelancing. Don’t expand any further on the topic and move on to discussing something else. Actually, it’s not about shutting them out, it’s about ensuring you get into work discussions with those people who educate, energize, and inspire you.

Get rid of toxic people and replace them with friends who are happy that you’re happy, who believe in you, and who only want you to be a success. If you’re always worrying about what others think about you, you’ll end up trying to be someone you’re not. Don’t mold yourself to how you think other people want you to be. You’ll end up hating yourself. So, focus on you, and you alone. Ignore anyone who is judgmental or harmful. Find what makes you happy, find your path, and focus on that.

Be around people who inspire you

Just as it’s vital to avoid people who bring negativity, it’s also important to be with people who build you up. In your freelance career, you should be able to choose the types of work you want to do and the clients you want to work for.

I don’t always accept the translation jobs that are offered to me. If it clashes with other projects or the other deadlines, then I’ll turn it down. Or if you do have any clients who don’t treat you well, you’ll pretty soon be able to weed them out and keep only those who value and respect you and the work you do. This is true for your personal and work-life balance.

Do something you’re good at every day

I’m sure there are lots of things in your life that you’re good at. These don’t have to be something that takes a long time or requires a lot of energy. Maybe you’re good at cooking simple meals or making a great cup of coffee. Do at least one of these things every day and enjoy the fact that you’re good at it.

My translation job is one thing that I’m good at. And by simply working on a translation project, I’m doing something I’m good at all day every day. So, be sure to ask your clients for feedback on your work. This will help boost your self-confidence as a freelancer, and help you become even better at your freelance job.

Learn to love yourself

If you don’t like who you are, how can anyone else?

I used to have little fights with my mother about the clothes I was wearing or when suddenly a pimple pop up on my face. However, I never put bad words into my heart. After getting to know the real me by considering my strengths: I accept the way I am and love myself.

Ask friends or family to tell you what they love about you. Write them down and create a list. Make sure it’s visible at all times, so you can easily read it and remind yourself of why you’re so amazing!

Above are just a few tips that I know work for me when I’m freelancing and need to boost my self-confidence from time to time. I’m sure there are more suggestions from other pro freelancers, so I’d be keen to hear how you up the confidence levels when they’re feeling a little low.

Know another way to boost self-confidence as a freelancer? Leave me your comment and I’ll put them up for others to make use of.