I recall my Odyssey of the Mind coach in high school telling us in brainstorming sessions: “there are no ugly babies”. He meant that if you see an ugly baby, you never say so out loud. The real life reaction is always “oh how precious!”, or some such thing. Anything short of proclaiming that baby delightful is just not done. So our philosophy for coming up with project or demonstration ideas was “there are no ugly babies”, I.e., there are no bad ideas.Your creation is kind of like your baby. More so than just as a metaphor. You plan it. You gather materials. You design. You execute. Disregard. Start over. Get frustrated. Possibly disappointed. Start over again. Pour your heart and soul into nurturing this endeavor. It becomes your baby and the thought of presenting it to the world and facing rejection or criticism is horribly scary.

So the big question is: how do we build up our confidence to keep creating and presenting these creations?
My suggestion?

Try something terrifying.
Maybe it is public speaking.

Maybe it’s dumping him.

Whatever it is, the point is to push through the fear and just do it.

When you come out on the other side still breathing, do it again.

And again.

In early 2017, I decided to swallow my fear and signed up to a beginner session of roller derby. Yes, the sport where you put on roller skates and beat each other up while also playing a game no one seems to actually understand. I could somewhat skate, but I was awful at nearly every nifty maneuver they taught us. Then I went to team tryouts and immediately broke my leg. It was a rough recovery with multiple surgeries and some rather ridiculous scenarios trying to care for  toddlers with my leg in a cast. However, I survived and even went back to skating. So many people asked me how I could go back.

Well, yes and no.

I was certainly more timid with some things, partly due to mobility issues from the surgeries.

But……I would tell people, “what is the worst than can happen? I break my leg? Been there done that”.

I had already gone through what many would consider one of the worst-case derby scenarios. I spent three months on crutches while take care of four kids under six at the time. I dragged myself around the yard weeding flower beds with a trash bag tied around my cast. I cooked meals while zooming around the kitchen on a wheely office chair. I accepted help from people who asked (that was probably the scariest part.)

I did the terrifying thing and something bad happened and I lived to tell about it. And then I went back and let people beat me up on skates again. I was not a strong player so that decision was probably questionable.

But the point is to push through the fear and do it.

And when You get through it, do it again with something else.

And again.

Keep throwing yourself into scary things. You will survive. Sometimes you’ll even thrive. And that is when the growth brings you awesome swells of self-worth and confidence. You see, confidence doesn’t have to come from knowing you’re good at something.

It can also manifest simply from your ability to pick yourself up and try again.

You approach opportunities in this way often enough, and presenting your creations, your art, your babies, will no longer be scary. Possible criticism won’t matter because you’ll have the confidence to move on to the next idea or even power through with the current one.