Believe in Yourself

June 02, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Believe in yourself, and the world will too.

This post comes on the heels of a week of me participating in something which caused me to no longer believe in myself. (see that post here) And I feel this is an important post to make, for both myself and for other artists, photographers and creative people.

Maybe you're one of the lucky ones who has the support of what you do from family and friends. If so, that's fabulous...say thank you and count your blessings. I'm one of the ones who, unfortunately, hasn't had that experience. I wish I had. I wish my family and friends believed in me and supported what I do. They don't, they never have. I've had more encouragement and support from a select few internet friends than any of those who exist in my "real life", with the exception of a very select few, who I can count on one hand.

One of the common traits of successful artist, according to this article by Aletta de Wal posted on Lori McNee's Fine Art Tips website, is: "Successful artists spend time only with people who are 100% supportive of their art career." Easy enough to achieve with friends who aren't supportive...move on to other friends or none if necessary. However, this is very difficult to do when you also have family members who don't support you. Of course, you could just not spend time with your family. I'm sure in some cases that's possible. In some, however, it's not feasible. At least not without making some major life changes and perhaps a total upheaval of your life.

This is why I feel it's very important is to BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. You simply cannot escape all of those who don't believe in you. You cannot always stop the negative messages, the indifference, the rolling eyes, critical remarks and big sighs. You cannot make these people who should support you but don't pat you on the back and tell you how great you're doing. You cannot make those closest to you believe in you and your talent. But you CAN believe in yourself.

Believing in yourself is absolutely crucial to your success. It is the one thing which will make or break the outcome of your artistic career. And like everything else in life, you have to make believing in yourself a habit, a way of living. Sometimes things sway you away from your way of being. Sometimes others will try to convince you that your way of living life is wrong. Sometimes others will tell you success can be achieved by doing all sorts of other things. Some of those things may work and some may not, but the point is, unless you believe in yourself, nothing will work long term. If something has recently caused you to doubt yourself and your creative talent, you must get back to believing in yourself. You must. Because it's the only way you can get on and stay on the track to a successful art career.

When you believe in yourself, the world will too. And when the world believes in you, they will buy your art. And when they buy your art, they support you. It supports you on a financial level, but also on an emotional level. Even if they don't buy your art, or don't buy it when you think they should, it doesn't matter...because you believe in yourself. If you don't believe in yourself, which also means believing in the creative work you do, it may not spin you financially out of control, but it certainly can emotionally send you to a place you don't want to be. Once you get to that dark place, it's really, really difficult to climb back out of it. But...if you believe in yourself at all times, you'll never fall into that dark place to begin with.

How does one begin to or return to believing in oneself? That is the question so many need answered. There's different ways of increasing your belief in yourself. If you search Google for "how to belief in yourself", you'll find all kinds of articles on the topic, all with good suggestions which might resonate with you and might not. I will tell you a few things I've implemented into my life which help me believe in myself.

The first thing I did years ago when I started this journey as a creative artist is give myself the time every day to do my work. Some people look at photography and art as "hobbies". They can certainly be a hobby activity, but in my case, this is what I wanted my life work to be, so I made it top priority. Just like getting up and going to that 8-5 office job when I had it was a top priority, I make getting up and working on my creative projects a priority. And this is when the fun began, because no one around me was willing to see what I was doing as "work". When I had my office jobs, people didn't call me all day long or drop in at my place of employment expecting to hang out. Yet when I left my office job and started my art career, this is exactly what happened. I gently - and sometimes not so gently - had to explain to those around me, this is my JOB. Just because I love it doesn't mean it's not work. I had to explain I'm still working, just at a different job. Some of those people just didn't get it. And we parted ways. Others still struggle with it today. I still get comments like "I called three hours ago and you didn't answer...". I'm used to it. I've learned if I didn't give my work top priority just like the person who went in to their scheduled job from 8-5 everyday, then I didn't believe in myself. Part of beginning to believe in myself was putting my work front and center.

The second thing I did was learn to focus on my successes, no matter how small. Maybe I didn't sell a limited edition print today, but I did sell a postcard featuring one of my works of art. If I were to wait to offer up a big THANK YOU for the times when I have a "big" sale, I'd be waiting a long time. Because the small sales far outweigh the big sales. I celebrate every sale, no matter how small. I express gratitude for every sale, even if it only earns me 28 cents. That person turned over their hard earned money for my art. And I am grateful. They may frame that little postcard and treasure it forever. The thought makes me very happy! Maybe the postcard was the only item within their budget at the time. And they chose to spend a little of their budget on my art, because it meant something to them, or is intended to mean something to their card recipient. How blessed I am! Every time I focus on one or more of my successes, it furthers the belief in myself.

The third thing I did after years of doing things totally the opposite was stop participating in groups on the internet. I still will post in forums and groups occasionally, yet each time I do, if someone says anything which I take as demeaning or critical, I spend a few days to a week getting my belief in myself back up to 100% where it needs to be. Groups and forums can be helpful when needing certain information or learning how to do a certain task. But when it comes to having conversations or asking for votes in a contest, they can certainly set you up for a belief system meltdown. My internet socializing has gone down from probably 75% of my time at first, down to 10%.

Of course now with the influx of social media, we have experts right and left telling us the only way to succeed is to be social. Which quite frankly, is bull-hockey. That is one way to gain some short term success. As soon as you stop being social, however, those peeps will forget you exist and the "because-I-know-them-like-I-know-my-neighbors" sales will cease. When you start focusing on producing more work and better work, your sales will increase again. When they increase from that, it tends to be more stable and long term. You actually have people buying your work because it speaks to them, it makes them feel something, or it takes them somewhere they want to go. Or it could just be because it matches their decor and style of the room where they'll hang the art. Regardless, your art is going to be around long after you're gone and it's best to get them in tune with it as soon as you can. I'm not saying don't be social with your collectors or show attendees or customers. It's good business and a kind thing to do to respond to anyone who approaches you and wants to talk about your work. But getting social in other ways just isn't necessary and it can do more harm to a belief system than good.

Being in the social circles, however, can help your art get seen more. Some websites popularize their art listings by the amount of times they are clicked on. You get enough people to click on your art, it rises up in the website search engine, and makes it to the top where it can be seen. Socializing can also help you get links placed from other websites to your own, which will help it rise up in the Google search engine, and once again, be at the top and more likely to be seen by possible new collectors and customers. You just have to decide if that's the route you wish to go, and see if your belief in yourself is affected negatively by being in social arenas. Just like I mentioned with the quote at the top of this blog post, you want to spend your time around others who are 100% supportive of your career. Out there in the social network world, there are many who are not.

The fourth thing I've done to help improve my belief in myself is to stop setting myself up for failure. In my case, stop entering contests is a key thing, as no matter how much my art sells and how many times people tell me they love my work, contests always make me feel like a failure before they're over with. Now if you read my previous blog post, you already know I forgot this recently. And my belief in myself took a big hit. Which is why I'm writing this post today...in an attempt to learn to believe in myself again and hopefully help someone reading begin to believe in himself or herself.

I've explained how this particular contest worked in my previous post, and unfortunately a lot of online contests are like this. No matter what the site administrators tell you, these contests are designed to do one thing: Get more traffic and links out there to the website hosting the contest. They aren't designed for the artist, though they will certainly give you all kinds of great sounding benefits if you enter and try to secure those votes. Those benefits will only be true for maybe 1% of the contest entrants, so the belief that these contests can help you succeed as an artist is not true for the majority. And what it can do for your belief system if you don't manage to get those votes is trash it.

So here I was, concerned for a week or so about the lack of votes in I had in this contest. When in reality, entering a contest I may have a 1% chance of even getting seen in is not in line with my goal of "making a full time income from sales of my art". Art critics and art peers don't determine the sales of my art. All they're determining is whether my art is worthy of a vote. They're not buying it. The people who are truly voting for my art are the business people in the world, and the workers in this world who take their hard-earned paychecks and actually make a purchase of my art in some way, form or fashion. Those are the people I need to focus on reaching, and those are the people I need to focus on creating better and better art for in the future.

I'm sure there are many more things I can do to further my belief in myself and strengthen it as time goes on. This is a learning process. Each year, I learn something new which helps me to believe in myself a little bit more, and get me closer to my goal. Actually, I've already reached my goal. I am making a living from sales of my art. But of course I want to make a better living. I want to have extra money to be able to travel and photograph new places, I want to be able to open the first JaiArt Gallery someday, and I want to be able to have money for retirement. So I still have to work on my belief in myself on a regular basis, and I have to do everything I can to keep it strong. Because it is the key to my success. I have to constantly remind myself, if you believe in yourself, the world will too.

--Jai

BELIEVE Baby Hawk Nestl Inspirational Postcard 37A