How to Boost Your Creative Confidence
Most people have creative impulses but only a few actually act on those impulses. Sadly, most of this comes from fear of rejection.
Perhaps you’ve experienced this first hand. Someone, probably way back in childhood, said what you made wasn’t good enough, or that you failed to understand the directions properly. As “silly” as that might seem, it’s probably made its mark and contributed to a fear of creative rejection. Well, the very first step towards pursuing the work you love whether that’s in film, art, music, or whatever, is to realize this fear and rather than fight it outright, to grow and ultimately, move through it.
Here are a few ways to start:
Set Goals for Yourself
Get on a program and start with goals that are interesting, achievable, and valuable to your creative growth. For instance, if you’re an aspiring screenwriter, set an achievable goal of deciding on a premise for week one, then move onto a first-draft outline for week two. Give yourself time to finish your goals since the real power of the work comes in showing up and doing the work. In this way you’re building your strength by demonstrating to yourself that yes, you can do it.
Few follow through but don’t let yourself be one of them. Stick to it. Know that when you do, you’re changing who you were then into who you want to be tomorrow. You’re converting negative past experiences into positive future experiences and you’re doing it now! Put in the work. Earn the success. This stuff isn’t just handed out. Are you one of the many or one of the few?
Accomplish Your Goals
Stay honest with yourself. Are you meeting your goals? Why or why not? Sometimes we can lie to ourselves, tell ourselves the “problem” is out there and out of our control or we can make it really abstract and hard to decipher. Oftentimes, building creative confidence in earnest requires nothing more than setting aside the time to do the work, then showing up and guess what—doing the work! The moment before the writer’s hands hit the keyboard can be the most exciting and scary to face. Have compassion for this part of yourself. It’s hard to acknowledge fears that seem so elementary, so unworthy of fear but doing so leads to growth.
Along the way, seek out the people who can help you fulfill your goals. Get a mentor who can help you change your bad habits and build new positive ones in their place. Give yourself visual cues, positive notes or even penalize yourself when you fail to show up for you. Visualize the successful future you vs. the unsuccessful future you. Then, make choices to ensure you’re working towards becoming the successful person you want to be.
Make Mistakes
The one thing few people ever say to up-and-coming creatives is to make mistakes. But know this, making mistakes is bound to happen. Try your best, use your knowledge, talent and anything else you have at your disposal to fulfill your goals but also know that making mistakes is inevitable. In fact, knowing what failure feels like takes it outside of the abstract realm makes it real. And guess what? It isn’t usually half as bad as we thought it was going to be! Failure sucks but don’t place so much pressure on getting things right that you end up doing nothing. That’s foolhardy. The point isn’t doing it perfectly the first time, it’s about getting better by applying yourself to the work, over and over again.
Talk about confidence with any number of creatives out there and they’ll tell you they’ve had their insecurities, challenges, and even their fair share of failure. The real truth of the matter is everyone on the planet has fear. We can choose to embrace our fear and grow or we can succumb to it. Taste your fear, feel your fear but don’t let it dictate your choices. Set goals that matter and do your best to fulfill those goals and know that the road to success is marked with failure along the way. Keep moving forward.
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