Believing In Yourself

It seems silly to write an article about believing in yourself. After all, it's one of the most important aspects to a creative person's life. A person who believes in himself can achieve more and has a much better time doing those things. And yet, in the multiple artistic areas I've been involved in, these creative types tend to be extremely self-conscious. They belittle the work they do and that negativity keeps them from being happy in their own skin. Believing in yourself must be a tougher prospect than I imagined.

I didn't just learn this from watching other people; I've had a hard time believing in myself creatively. I think that one of the reasons I had a tough time putting faith in myself was that I blamed myself for what I hadn't done (or what I hadn't done well) instead of focusing on the things I had accomplished. By the time I graduated college, I'd produced two plays, written two others and I'd acted in over 10 plays, one of which got me a nomination for the school's form of the Tony Awards. Instead of looking at these accomplishments, I got down on myself about not doing more. I looked at the most negative aspects of my creative life and I brought those to the front.

Even nowadays when I'm much more focused on gratitude, I still have moments when "believing in yourself" doesn't make it onto my to-do list. I think about how much writing I still have to do in a given day and how I'm letting myself down by not getting it done right away. The best way I've found to right myself in that situation is to look back at what I have accomplished. I've written books! People have bought them! If I brought that up instead of looking at a currently empty page, there is no question that the page will practically write itself with my newfound positivity.

Believing in yourself is not really taught in the schools and those who do have that moral enforced are usually the ones who are the most lacking in such optimism. Please be less hard on yourself and make a list of what you have done over the course of your semi-productive lifetime. You may be having a rough time in the present but once you see how well the past version of you has done, you'll be surprised how quickly your situation turns around. 

Done with Believing in Yourself? Go back to Motivation Techniques.