Self-doubt is something I have always struggled with for as long as I can remember. I hold myself to such a high standard when it comes to creative and academic work. I tend to hold the belief that I can always improve and I can always do better, which has led me to a lot of self-doubts because I never few my work as ever being good enough. After reading the Seven Ways to Crush Self-Doubt, I found some of the tips to be a bit obvious, but some to be helpful. Tip number three was one that stuck out to me:
"Be vulnerable to a trusted community"
This is something I have always struggled with because I am incredibly bent on "if it isn't good enough for me then I refuse to show it to anyone else." I am not a big fan of showing the process to the finish work. It's finished or no one will see it at all. However, this mindset I have developed is being challenged greatly this semester. I am currently in a Digital Design course where the professor is very progress based. He wants to see our sketches and to help us from beginning to end. I am learning to open up a little bit and realize it is not a bad thing to get developmental feedback, but overall I have been a little more anxious with every class.
The Neil Gaiman commencement address is something that I have heard before many years ago, and it actually reminds me of my favorite quotes from Ira Glass:
"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years, you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work."
What the two have in common to me is they both encourage just making stuff. That is the only way to get better it to continue writing, painting, creating and even if it's bad it's ok because you are doing something. Essentially, you have to create mistakes and learn from them.
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