Can you trust yourself to be effective? Can you trust yourself to succeed where it matters? Can you trust yourself to keep on learning?

The answers should be yes, Yes, and YES.

Nobody can achieve everything on their own. But unless you trust yourself to push forward and keep exploring what works for you, everyone else’s help will go to waste.

What’s the use in listening to others if you don’t listen to yourself? As the title of this post says, you are more effective than you think. Just trust yourself and get ready to shine.

The one way to write effectively – YOUR way

Top writing takes practice, takes mistakes, and takes guts. As you progress, your depth and breadth of knowledge will increase. Plus, you’ll learn tips along the way and discover loads of techniques to make an impact and save time.

Learn from others, but don’t try to imitate a style or write the way you *think* is expected of you.

At uni, your first year grades rarely count toward your final degree result (but do check first!). Instead of using this as an opportunity to take it easy, take each assignment as an experiment to find what works for you.

Be prepared to make mistakes and learn from them. That’s why draft essay attempts are better than pulling off a single all-nighter. Tutors can check where you’re headed and give you advice and feedback before you’ve even handed in the piece of work.

The more you attempt and explore, the more likely your own styles of writing will become apparent. This is massively powerful.

Don’t think unique. Think U-know!

Undergraduate learning is mostly about understanding, exploring, reaching conclusions, assessing other conclusions, and so on. There’s a difference between undergraduate and postgraduate work. Your job is not to find an unexplored angle of the universe and claim it as your own.

If you stumble upon something amazing, it’s either been done before or you’ve managed a massively rare fluke. Either way, you’re still learning and discovering, so it’s no bad thing.

I could say it’s better to ‘know’ you know than to ‘think’ you know. But there’s no room for arrogance in academic writing. Well, there shouldn’t be room anyway… Build up as much confidence as you can and continue to seek help from tutors and your network as necessary.

The key is to be confident in your choices and actions, rather than be adamant that there’s no other way. Learning should be about openness; open to opposing views and open to trusting your own.

A fine balance, but one you’ll be thankful for once you’ve found it. 🙂

Your methods are personal to you. Your achievements are ready to share.

It doesn’t matter how you write it. The fact is, you’ve written it.

Do you hate staring at a monitor with a blank white screen waiting for you to type away some amazing critical analysis?

No problem. Why not start writing inside a Facebook message? Or tapping out a few paragraphs in the form of text messages? Or getting good, old-fashioned, pen and paper to see where it’ll take you? Or dictating into a sound-recording device? Or blogging a bit of content?

Yes, even blogging could help you trust yourself more. If people can turn blog posts into books, nothing is stopping you from using the same method to get started on your assignments!

Like I’ve said above, writing is suited to drafts. Writers don’t sit down one day and resolve to write an entire book in a single sitting.

Imagine a writer getting loads of blog posts finished in private. None of the posts are published until such a time that a publisher asks to put them in book form.

Trust yourself to choose when it’s time to publish. Use the methods and practices that work for you and bring it together however you like. It may be a weird and wonderful technique, but nobody cares. If that’s what it takes to be amazing, then do it. The finished article is what everyone else appreciates.

Your life is a jigsaw. Put it together.

Bring your achievements together and find what makes you tick.

At first, this patchwork may look like a mish-mash of random events. But within the randomness there are all sorts of links.

Some of your individual achievements will look great, even in isolation. And there are many more under the surface that aren’t apparent at first, but which suddenly look amazing when presented as a package.

So keep track of all those successes, no matter how small they may be. They may come in more useful than you think.

You need you just like you need others. Trust in that.

The world is full of amazing opportunities, and fascinating possibilities. Reach out to them. The more you reach out, the more likely you’ll get stuff handed to you.

You can trust yourself.