3 Creative Confidence Boosters that you can apply today
So: I have been ORGANIZING ALL MY WRITING INTO A CONTENT LIBRARY!
Why all caps? I AM SHOUTING. It's a big deal! I have pieces of writing everywhere…but there's no central portal to make it all usable by me: I write it, publish it, and it's functionally gone.
I spend WAY more time staring at blank pages that anyone with this much previous writing should ever need to. That ends this week!
Today I consolidated my writings about creative confidence - and remembered that WOW: possibly 89 percent of all business struggles have something to do with it. When I work with clients, it's always when we move beyond a creativity block that the big breakthroughs happen.
In the small biz spaces, we spend time working on our "CEO mindset." Our "money mindset." But who spends time working on their "creative mindset?" Not many of us. We suffer, and our work suffers.
Of course, all these "mindsets" are close cousins. They all come down to our feelings about our inherent brilliance and value and beauty and worthiness to exist and claim space. And when we put some love into nourishing them, we become powerful superheroes. Really.
Here are 3 nuggets about creative confidence I unearthed from this exercise. Take what you need. Enjoy:
You are as brilliant as anyone who has ever lived. You just had your confidence as a creator shaken a bit.
Many of us struggle when we start making something "creative." Like visual imagery, a series of writings, a name for a new product or service. As soon as we enter the awkward part, where nothing looks right, and it's not "there" yet - our feelings of failure are triggered. In those moments, we expect that thing we are making to reassure us that we are creative, or smart, or that creativity is possible for us. We come to the process fragile, because of so many things that shook our creative confidence as children. The image or the object we are trying to make seems to confirm our fears, and it's easy to get discouraged and give up.
You are as brilliant as anyone who has ever lived. Any thought or feeling that comes up to try to invalidate that truth is some figment of oppression or misinformation you were saddled with.
2. Your artwork/writing/idea is not here to reassure you.
The awkward and BAD part of the process where nothing is working is the most important part of the process. You are supposed to experience that. There are no failures and there is no waste in the creative process. While you are learning and seeking your way towards something, you are engaged in a collaboration with forces conscious and subconscious, personal and cultural, and it's a hot mess. It's supposed to be. The "mistakes" are the stepping stones through the fog. Be in the fog, and magic will begin to happen: when it's ready.
3. You get to build your business how you want and make space for the creative process.
Learn about ways other people make their businesses work, and then turn away and create it YOUR way, taking what's useful and relevant to you and dropping the rest.
You are a creator and building a business is a deeply creative process. How's your relationship with your creativity? Do you get stuck? There are a lot of reasons we SAY we are stuck...but in my experience working with many brilliant entrepreneurs, "stuck" is most often just a place we don't trust ourselves to think creatively.
Do you know how creative you are? Do you trust yourself to take the time to play, experiment, risk failure, and do something truly new, and YOU? What gets in your way?
I hope this helps. The creator in me high fives the creator in you. We're doing this.
This was originally published (November 11, 2020) for the Bureau of Tactical Imagination's email subscribers. To receive our weekly free education and inspiration for your business and brand building efforts, sign up here.