I'll be honest, I'm not a completely confident person. For those that know me personally this will come as no surprise. Right from when I was a kid, I struggled with answering questions in class, school debates and generally making my voice heard. Even after over 15 years of education and many different job and roles in the workplace, those confidence jitters still get to me. When it comes to public speaking, I avoid it entirely if I can.

It doesn't get any easier when I'm writing either. As I type this, my hand is itching to select all I've written and delete it.

When I am working on a post to publish, I just don't have the courage of my convictions. I've tried in the past numerous times to put my thoughts together on a number of topics but in the end I've just deleted the post and looked for something else to write.

Half the battle I face is actually articulating my thoughts into words, written or spoken, so that they present an argument or reasoning that others will not react with offence. The other half of the battle is following up those words with replies or explanations to others. If you're going to voice your opinion on a topic then you need to be able to back that opinion up and explain it.

It's only in the last couple of years that I've managed to start making progress on building up my confidence when it comes to public speaking. My stint in an agile development team done wonders for my confidence. I found that daily stand ups and retrospectives were great opportunities to voice my thoughts within a group. I'm still not there when it comes to public speaking, but I'm gradually chipping away at it and building up my confidence.

Am I ready to do a talk at a conference? Hell no.

A local meet up or user group? Maybe.

As for the writing side of voicing my thoughts, it's definitely easier than speaking. I do find it much easier to just write. Whether those words get published is down to me and whether I feel confident publishing those words. I'm happy for the moment to let just a trickle of my writing find its way here on my blog. It might only be one or two posts a month that test my confidence but with each one I'm raising the bar slightly.