Overcoming Creative Self-doubt

Last night, I was battling self-doubt. Why do I even try? What’s the point? No one will like this. No one will want to read my work. My brain is working on me double over time doubting my creativity and questioning why I’m doing it in the first place. My brain was even telling me I’m better off giving it all up, calling it quits, because it would end so much grief and free up my time. What a crock! Time savers aside, what would creatives do with their time anyway- more TV? For starters, I’d definitely pick up something else creative, because creativity is ultimately what brings me joy. I’d be obsessing over something else my brain is cooking up to create. That organ inside my skull won’t leave me alone unless I’m engaged in creativity. I know this! So, why do I go to that self-doubt space?

Fear

That’s it. Everything leads back to fear. When I begin to doubt my creativity the negative self-doubt talk comes from being afraid of something.

“Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it,” Sylvia Plath wrote in her journal while in college. “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” Furthermore, we can say that anything in life can be created, painted, carved, photographed, or filmed—but only if fear doesn’t get in the way. This is what stalls me. Fear. It can take away hours, days, months, and at one point the fear took over two years of my life where I did not create. It might be hard to believe, but it is my truth. So how did I pull out of it years ago, and last night.

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

-Sylvia Plath

Community

After I went through my long two year dry spell, I finally found a memoir writing community. I’ve heard many artists talk about how community pulls them out of their slump. I’m not the only one! Surprise! I threw myself into a group of writers at various stages of their career and I realized that we were all working toward something, and continually trying to figure it all out. What a relief!

Also, there is a lot of excitement around the collaboration part of creativity when you have a community to bounce ideas off of each other. It sets self-doubt aside in our head and allows us to embrace the act of sharing our passion with someone else. It’s also a relief when you learn that others in your community are winging it too.

Keep Creating

Once I started writing again, after my two year dry spell, it was crucial for me to continue creating. Keep going. I had to commit to myself. My brain fell back into that self-doubt pool too easily. If I keep working on what I’ve set my mind to do, it helped me to continue to write even if it wasn’t daily, my mind kept generating new thoughts on my work-in-progress.

“I find the best way to deal with self doubt as an artist is to keep creating. Show up every single day in front of the canvas and paint, draw, throw color on the canvas—whatever it takes to just keep working. I don’t always end up loving everything that I do, but the more I show up in front of my canvas, the more I know that being an artist is a process and not a final place to get to. This allows me to work through any doubts that I may have.” 

–Carlos Delgado , Columbian Artist

Find Inspiration

This is what pulled me out of my self-doubt last night. I made a decision to shut my head up and work in a different medium making a short film/ad for our podcast. Before I knew it, I was completely engaged in a different form of creativity that I enjoy. I was playing around with images, writing text, and working on the timing of the piece. My head shut off to disparaging thoughts and turned on to sparks of creativity. I began to relax and recognize that my head was lying to me earlier and I felt happy again.

“Self-doubt is constantly lurking in the background, But I have found ways to silence the self-doubt by living in the moment and understanding that it’s the journey and not the end result that counts.”

– Barbara Ségal, Sculptor

Focus on the Positive

I know this one can be hard when fear takes hold. Focusing daily on the positive things that creativity brings to my life keeps me in the moment. After all, I’ve learned that is where I need to be. In the moment. Once I get into that self-doubt fear based mindset, I do know I have to take action.

I may not eradicate self-doubt completely. Somehow, I doubt it, but I can shed some of the fears that creep up by taking action, by doing, and pull out a tool when I go into the self-doubt space in my head.