Outwork your self-doubt.
If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. - Vincent Van Gogh
“Imposter Syndrome”, “Self-doubt”, and “The voice of reality”, are a few of the names it goes by. That voice at the back of your head telling you “you can’t do it”. Sometimes it stays there, sometimes it finds its way to the fore and it becomes so powerful it’s crippling, rendering you paralyzed. We’ve all heard it, faced it, and lived with it.
I know no single cure for it, but a few things work. Do you know what DOESN’T work? Doing nothing. Do anything but nothing. In fact, do exactly what it doesn’t want you to do. It might whisper over your shoulder as you put in the work, but the one thing it can’t do is hold your limbs.
One of the most vital habits I developed last year was taking on “hard stuff”. Doing stuff I felt I couldn’t do or didn’t feel like doing. Sometimes a cause of imposter syndrome is a lack of confidence, a virus that can be countered by building competence. Competence breeds confidence. The better you get, the better you believe you can get.
There isn’t much to be said about this, but if there’s anything you should know, it’s this - it’s not always gonna be easy. Humans don’t come out of the box with the capacity to do things, but we’re beautifully equipped with the tools to learn them, and the more we use those tools, the better honed they’ll be.
Now, go forth and prosper.
If you need a (not so) friendly reminder to get you doing the hard stuff, get my “Do or do not” frame from my print store
Nice piece! 👏👏