Do It Anyway: Creating in the Face of Fear

“It’s not who you are that holds you back. It’s who you think you’re not.” — Unknown

Repeat after me:

“I’m such a failure”

“I’m not good enough”

“I’m not worth the time or money”

“Who am I to do this? I’m not cut out for this.”

“Just stick to the life you know and have. I can’t do any better.”

How does that feel? Pretty crappy? Demoralized, demotivated and depressed?

If it’s hard to say it loud and proud, then why do we keep saying it in our heads?

Self-doubt destroys everything in its sight

We all have those moments of not being good enough, when our brains won’t stop insulting us. These can be completely debilitating and stop us in our tracks. We’re left paralyzed by our own thoughts.

It destroys our creativity, optimism, and our self-esteem.

I do this all the time.

And it needs to stop.

Self-doubt is just our minds making shit up. It tries to protect us from the unknown and the scary bits. We need to teach it that there’s nothing to nothing to fear. The only way to push past that voice is to do it anyway.

Disregard the warnings, ignore the red flags, and create anyway.

So how do we do that? Here are 4 lessons to remember when self-doubt starts creeping in:

1) Nobody is waiting for you to fail

Actually, people want you to succeed. Nobody is waiting to bask in the demise of your failed creation like it’s a ray of sunshine.

2) The ones that came before us are only the foundation

Comparison is the killer of creativity. We see all these “ hot shots” making millions from writing or their blog and we think, “That’ll never be me” and even when they flat out say, “This took me 10 years to achieve and working my ass off”, we still think of their success as a magical fairy dust that was just sprinkled on their work.

We often think that we cannot surpass someone who is already established in the creative field but in actuality, they serve as a foundation in which we can build on top of. Their work is not the be-all-end-all but rather serves as inspiration for their followers to do better.

3) It’s normal to lose motivation even if it is our passion

Many of us give up too early once we’ve lost motivation. We’re afraid that it’s not our true calling simply because we’re doubting ourselves.

If we’ve found our true calling, shouldn’t we be motivated and inspired all the time?

I, for one, hate the word passion. Passion puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on us to be motivated and inspired all the time.

We can’t be “on” all the time.

We’re human.

We’re going to go through the slumps and the highs like anyone else chasing their dream because that’s how life works. The slumps don’t mean we’re not meant to do this. In fact, the more we doubt ourselves, the more reason to keep going.

Losing our motivation is normal. Although motivation and inspiration are intrinsic, it’s something we can’t completely control — they come and go as they please so if we’re really going to continue creating, we can’t rely on motivation to keep us going.

We just have to keep going.

4) Practice makes (and takes) confidence

We’ve heard the saying “Practice makes perfect” but practice also results in confidence. Maybe because takes confidence to make confidence.

Effort counts.

Effort in public counts even more.

Sometimes we lose confidence because we don’t get the traction we want. Didn’t get the recognition or acknowledgment, applause or audience we were hoping for.

Other times, it’s not the external encouragement we lack but the internal recognition we’re not hearing. We don’t think we deserve the applause and feel like a fraud when we receive praise for our work.

We think it takes bravery to make it with our craft, and while that’s true, it takes even more courage to keep going when we feel like a failure.

Confidence comes from doing it anyway even when we’re unsure, when everything in our body screams we’re not cut out for this type of work.

Practice takes courage and the more courageous we are, the more confident we become.

Creating art is tough.

Continuing to create is even harder.

This story was originally published on Medium