Creative Pep Talk
033 - Peppy Talk 2 - Self Doubt
(upbeat music) Hey y'all, just a quick heads up. The episode you're about to listen to is eight to 10 years old. Now, these episodes were intended to be evergreen, and I still believe there's a lot of good information in these early episodes, but I do wanna let you know that some of my ideas have evolved over time. Times have changed since we made these episodes, and ultimately, I'd like to think I've grown a lot as an artist and a human, and that these don't necessarily represent my best work or the best of the podcast. If you're new around here, I suggest starting with the most recent episode, or at least go back to around 300, and move forward from there. Enjoy the episode. (upbeat music) ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ - Hey everybody, it's Andy J. Miller, and you're listening to the Creative Pep Talk Podcast. Remember, you can listen to this online at illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. Okay, it's Monday morning, bright and early. I thought I would bring you a Peppy Talk. These are the short, quick fire talks, just to give you a little pep in your step in the early days of the week. So, that's what this is gonna be. So, Brian Hurst again, piped in on Twitter. Thank you, Brian, about some issues. I was asking online on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter by searching my name, Andy J. Miller, I believe my tag is @Andy_J_ Miller. I asked what topics that you wanted to hear me talk about, and you can still go on there and submit some topics if you have an idea of something you wanna hear discussed on the Creative Pep Talk Podcast. I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want, not the job you have, and I have applied this to my Creative Practice too, which means if you want professional results, you need to present online like a pro, and that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's Fluid Engine, and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding, that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product. So go check it out Squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out for yourself, and when you're ready to launch your site, use promo code PepTalk, all one word, all caps for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world. (upbeat music) - Hey, in case you don't know, we have a monthly live virtual meetup every last Monday of the month with supporters of the show from Patreon and Substack. We have so much fun on these calls, and they are the warmest, most encouraging creatives that I have ever met, and we also talk real creative practice stuff. We have authors, illustrators, lettering artists, picture bookmakers, fine artists, musicians and folks that work in video and film as well, and we have people that are just starting out, people super established in their creative careers and everything in between. For the rest of this year, we're gonna chat through our new Journey of the True fan series, exploring questions and ways to apply these ideas to your own creative practice so that you can leave 2024 stronger than you came in with more visibility, connection with your audience and sales. Sign up to whichever suits you best at either patreon.com/creativepeptalk or antijpizza.substack.com. And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. (upbeat music) - And what he said was issues like self-doubt, I can't remember the other ones, but we're gonna talk about self-doubt today. And I started to unpack this idea of self-doubt and actually got me thinking about last week on my blog, I wrote a post about understanding what it is you really want out of your career, having clear goals so that you can have clear strategy to meet those goals in your creative career. And a buddy of mine, Jeffrey Bowman, who's one of my best friends from England, he's an illustrator and designer. And the editor of the book, The Outsiders. He, The Outsiders, not just not the novel, but the book for D. Gastalton, it's a design outdoor living book. But anyway, he sent me a message and reminded me of Simon Sinek. And Simon Sinek is the author of Start With Why. And his idea is that any great venture doesn't start with what product they're gonna sell or how they're gonna sell it, how they're gonna be different. They start with why they're doing it at all, and that the why is always selfless, that the why is the deep-rooted thing that is a selfless calling. And that got me thinking again about this question because I do wanna think about what, I do wanna think about how do I go about selling or how do I go about finding what it is I'm trying to go towards? How do I find a goal that is compelling and challenging enough to wanna go towards? I do wanna think about that, but I wanted to stop and ask myself again and refresh myself with why am I going this direction at all? And, you know, I think I always come back to this idea and this especially relates to the podcast. I always come back to the idea that I really do believe that creative people in the culture that we're a part of are underutilized, undervalued, and misunderstood, and that because of that, they end up in the margins of society for the most part. You know, the creative people that I know, I would say it's the exception is that they're successful people. And, you know, if you're creative, you can be really successful as a person, but I have so many friends and people that I know as I grew up and even through college that were these creative people in the systems of the world were not really set up for them to succeed or for others or for companies to use them for their truest value. Like, they're all these hoops that society has that we need to jump through to get in on the game. And I think a lot of those hoops are more difficult for a lot of creative people. Now, creative people come in all shapes and sizes. So, yeah, sometimes that's not the case, but it's been my understanding. And actually, my biggest problem is not only are they misunderstood and undervalued, but my biggest problem is that the rest of opportunities actually a lot of creative people are not gonna be, not gonna excel at, so they're not gonna get promoted, they're not gonna go further, or they're not gonna do them at all. Like, I think most jobs are not set up for creative people. And, you know, just as an example, one of the ways that I got my start in England and actually some of being there was easier to get my start if you look at the healthcare and the taxes, you know, healthcare is free healthcare, so you don't have to mess with health insurance and knowing all the premium stuff and all that jazz. And then the other side of it is they have a flat kind of tax rate system. You know, the only people that end up filing their own taxes, you know, most people, if you work for an employer, the employer files your taxes for you. But if you're self-employed, my experience was if you're self-employed, at the end of the year, you go on to the self-employment website, you basically type in how much you earned and then they tell you the percentage you owe, you pay it with your credit card and then you move on for the year. And if you are a freelancer in America and you pay your taxes, you know that that is not how things work here. And, you know, it's stuff like that where if you're financially minded, if you're really business-minded, both of those two things, setting up your business and taking care of these hoops in America may not be a big deal for you. But for me and for a lot of other creative people that I know, those go against the grain, they go against their strengths and it makes it seem like there's these giant obstacles in the way. So I started thinking about how do I play my part because I've been privileged enough to make a career out of creative pursuits, out of pushing into my strengths, doing the things that I'm really good at. And, you know, I have a really high sense of the things I'm not good at, the things that when it comes to average Joe on the street, the basic principles of life, I'm probably worse at in a lot of ways. You know, like when I worked in the movie theater, I talked about this before or subway, you know, and everybody there could be the cashier. And I really struggled to be the cashier. You know, I got decent grades in math, but I, on the spot, having to deal with money, having to think on my feet in that way was just like really overwhelming to me. And also the lack of autonomy to have to stay in a job for eight to 12 hours, to stay in the same place, I get so fidgety. I love that I work for myself. And yes, I have deadlines that I have to work hard on, but when it's time, if I want to take an hour break or a two hour break and work later into the night or work more on the weekends or whatever, I have the option and I can, I have that. And that for me is a much better existence. So, my why, the thing that I'm passionately pursuing is, how do I, how do I be strategic about my own career? How do I, how am I strategically successful so that I don't have to, so I have to go through the minimum amount of hoops in this society, the things that play on my weaknesses? And then how do I systematically understand this strategy, so I can pass it on to other creative people so that they can communicate their value more clearly so that they can navigate their career easier, so I can help other people just give them tips, anything that I'm learning and say, hey, try this out, it helped things go more smoothly for me. And so, I'm passionate about seeing other creative people find ways of living successful lives, full lives as anyone else, doing things that they love, and you're not gonna love everything about your job, but things that utilize your unique strengths and your unique value in the culture, because I believe that companies, an organization, and the country needs you to use your value. And so, I started to think about what stops us from doing this thing, because I believe that having a successful career in art is a significant achievement. And I thought, how do you achieve something significant? Well, you gotta have the motivation and the confidence to go push in a straight line for an extended period of time, for as long as it takes until you get there. And I think that sounds maybe kind of vague, but I don't really think it is. I think that in order to have to successfully achieve something significant, you have to have the motivation and the confidence. And so, both of these are about belief. And so, motivation, I think, is believing in the goal. And I think confidence is believing in yourself and your ability to achieve the goal. And I think you gotta have both of these things. I don't think you can get up in the morning and push into your creative career without having both of these things. So, let's look at motivation. - Ah, the holidays are here. You gotta find a unique gift for Uncle Derek and your sister, Catherine. And her kids, Jetson, and Jetta, and Jirfree, and Jaggab, and another two J kids. There's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus, there's the ethical thing. You gotta shop small, it just, it's a lot. But it doesn't have to be. Uncommon Goods makes all of this simple and straightforward for real. The site is chock full of unique and interesting gifts that also support small businesses. My fam loves advent calendars. I think Sophie would like to stitch a day advent calendar. And 12 days of hot sauce is definitely shouting my name. Sorry, that wasn't me. That was the 12 days of hot sauce calendar shouting. Seriously, we had tons of fun browsing the site for ourselves and kids and family to get 15% off your next gift. Go to uncommongoods.com/peptalk. That's uncommongoods.com/peptalk for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer, uncommon goods, we're all out of the ordinary. How do you get motivated? I think you get motivated or you increase the belief in your goal when you have clarity on why you want this goal, what the goal is and how you're gonna get there. So if you stop, you stop and you really decide, look, I'm gonna take this month to think about where am I ultimately trying to go in my creative career? Why am I doing that? What is it I want to achieve and how am I gonna get there? What are the actionable steps? How do I get there? And as a side note, I just wanna talk about this thing. I heard, I'm gonna put this, I'm gonna go back and find the link and I'm gonna put it on Twitter. I heard this amazing articulation of how to advance in your freelance career that I thought was fantastic. It was actually putting words to some ideas that I already have, but I didn't think of it this clearly. And the idea was that if you wanna work for, this conversion was saying, if you wanna work for Wired, the best way to do that is to go up the ladder not directly, so don't start at the bottom of Wired, be in the intern and then slowly work yourself up until you can write an article for Wired. He related it to the cheetah. The cheetah has this ability to jump sideways, so it runs towards its enemies and it can jump sideways onto them. And so instead of trying to go the direct way and jump onto Wired through one step like leapfrog up your way up to get to do this Wired article, he talks about start with the weakest point, start with the easiest tech blog to write for and start there. And when you've done a few for there, go up to the next rung and then go up to the next rung. I have the same attitude about how I got into freelance illustration. I found the weakest point in entry. I felt like when I start doing paid work that's the goal. And so I found the easiest way to get a decent client. And it's always changing, so I can't tell you, go here, go there. But I can tell you, whatever that goal is, when it comes to your actionable steps, your how you're gonna get there, you have to ask yourself, where's the weakest point of entry that I can start? And go achieve that. And when you've achieved that and you're successful in that realm, go up to the next rung of ladder. If it's editorial market, don't go straight for the New York Times. Don't go straight for the New York Times. Go for your local newspaper that those free newspapers that utilize illustration. Go check them out, do some work for them. Get paid for it. Who cares if it's 50 bucks in illustration? Just get paid for it. And then once you have a few of those on your belt, go send your best ones out and connect with the next rung of the ladder. You know, these specialist niche magazines that aren't super famous or anything, that need some illustration. Go up to that level. And when you've got a decent portfolio of that stuff, go up to the next level. So that's your how. So I think you need to know what you want, say it's work for the New York Times. You need to know how you're gonna get there strategically, because it's cool to not have a strategy to just go with the flow. But it's the people that have strategy, and I can almost guarantee if those people out there that you like are successful, they have strategy. Like all the people I know, all the big wigs that I've talked to, they have strategy. They're making strategic moves. So have a strategy, know how to do it, and also know why you wanna achieve this. Why do you believe that the world is a better place for you having done this thing? That's how I think you increase your belief in the goal. And that's how when you increase the belief of your goal, you're gonna be more motivated. And then the other thing that you need to do, which is going back to this idea of self doubt, Brian Hurst, is believe in yourself, believe in your ability to achieve the goal. How do you increase your belief in yourself? Well, I love this line from Henry Ford. Whether you believe you can or you believe you can't, you're probably right. And that sounds like, you know, I'm really interested in these ideas that are like these cliches that actually hold this truth in them, that hold practical truth. And so you've heard these people say, "If you can believe it, you can achieve it." And it sounds real cheesy and, you know, scammy marketing guy or snake oil salesman guy. And I don't think it's actually like that. I think there's actually truth to it. You know, when I go up against a goal, if I'm feeling like I probably can't do this, I probably don't have the skills or I'm not exceptionally gifted in this area. For instance, kids' books, you know, when I first started to go down that path of wanting to do my own kids' books, it was really difficult to make a pitch because I had no idea whether I was cut out for this work. And every time I would go do it, I would feel like, "Oh, there's no way I'm gonna do this." Or how, what if I spend all of this time working for this thing and it doesn't work out because I'm just not good enough. I don't have the skills to do it. And I think so many times we get so wrapped up in this idea of whether we're meant to do this thing or we're cut out for this thing. And I think the truth is, if you believe that you can do it and you're motivated, you're gonna get close enough to have a decent payoff. So maybe I won't ever make my own, you know, author and illustrate my own big successful kids' book. Maybe that's true. But if I make pitches and I do, and I strategically think about how is the best possibility of me writing a book, of illustrating a book, of pitching a book, if I go at all of these avenues strategically, I really do believe that there's gonna be a big payoff for that work. It might not be the payoff exactly that I'm looking for, but I can guarantee that if I do all of these activities strategically that the payoff is gonna be worthwhile, and it might take my journey into a surprising place, but I love when that happens anyway. And so I think one of the things you gotta do when it comes to believing, increasing the belief in yourself is I think you need to ask yourself, I think you need to align your goals with what you know you're good at, with what other people have told you you're good at, with what you're confident in. And I think you also need to ask yourself, in what areas have I been attacked? So for me, there's a lot of things that I do, that I love to do, that I'm good at doing, that people pay me to do, that other people have gone out of their way to diminish or discourage. And I think at the time, I didn't even realize it was happening. And I think I talked about this on an early episode about haters, early in my career, I had a guy who told me he would hire me for the odd jobs and stuff. And I felt like maybe, I could be wrong, I can't know the man's heart, but I felt like he was being jealous of what I was doing, and he said, well, I know when to hire you, when I wanna fill up a page. And I was really hurt by it, because what I felt like he was saying was, your work is unsophisticated, and when I just need someone to fill space with random junk, I call you. Now the truth is, at the time, and even now, I feel like one of the best assets on my work is my ability to tap into the flow of the kind of subconscious and do that disassociated stream of consciousness type drawing and artwork. And I feel like that actually, to me, is deep rooted in my beliefs and what I love and the work that I enjoy and the type of work I wanna make. And, but he diminished it into filling space. I had another guy who I asked for some advice and he said he basically couldn't give me advice because his work was conceptual and mine was decorative, and he might've meant that as the nicest thing in the world, but for me, it was like another diminishing thing, like all you do is decorate things, which basically is saying anybody could do that. It doesn't take any brains, it doesn't take any skill, anybody could decorate it, decorate a page. And you know what? Again, that fundamentally is actually not true about my work. There's a much deeper thread, there's all kinds of things going on. In the second of all, people pay me to do this work and they love the work that I'm doing for them. And so, you have to, one of the things that you gotta do is understand that there are gonna be forces out there that are gonna try to stop you from believing in what you're doing and believing in your work and they're gonna try to confuse you. And what's gonna happen is, self-doubt is actually the secret sauce of buttered spaghetti. Now, if you go back to another episode, you know what I talk about? You can't make buttered spaghetti artwork, which is artwork that anybody would eat. Anybody would consume, nobody's thrilled about it, but anybody would eat it. What you wanna make is the sushi of artwork. You wanna make something that people are either can crazy about or they hate because it's when someone's a crazy fan that they actually buy it. But buttered spaghetti, nobody wants to buy buttered spaghetti. And self-doubt is the secret sauce to buttered spaghetti. What's the secret sauce to buttered spaghetti, buttered? It's not secret, right? It's when you doubt yourself, you are setting yourself up for failure because when you're self-conscious about your art, you're gonna be self-conscious about your message. You're gonna be self-conscious about your why. And you're not gonna put yourself into it. And you're not gonna make a statement. You're not gonna make an opinion. You're not gonna have, it's not gonna be unique. And if it's not unique, it's not gonna stand out. If you're self-conscious, you don't want to stand out. But with art, you have to stand out. And so you have to address this. What is making me doubt myself? What is making me doubt my message? What is making me doubt my why? If you get back to your why and you say, why do I wanna make this work? If you do the work there, that's gonna increase your belief in your approach. And then if you get self-aware about what are my strengths, you know, why do I wanna do the work that I do? Why do I think these strengths are important? Find what you think works about what you're good at. And then put your blinders on. I think jealousy of others where they try to tear down what you do or when you're jealous of others, when you wish that you had the strengths of other people, those are the things that turn into self-doubt. I wanna put one more kind of note on that. I think that it's true that jealousy can be the recipe for self-doubt and lack of belief in your work, which can cause you to not achieve anything significant. I do believe that. However, some, you know, I heard someone say recently that you should only compare yourself, your work to your own work and to your own self. And I can see the heart of that and I understand that. I don't necessarily agree with it though. As a competitive person, comparisons to other people actually drive me, actually give me motivation. Yeah, sometimes they make me feel a little bit sick to my stomach when you see someone come out with someone. You know, recently, one of my favorite artists, someone that I feel a little bit in competition with, you know, they were like doing work that eventually I'd kind of become bored with it. It wasn't, you know, it was just not exciting anymore for whatever reason. And then they came out recently with this piece that blew my mind. Couldn't believe that they had grown so much out of nowhere and it massively lit a fire. And so when I talk about comparison, I'll tell you how I think it's done right, compare yourself to the people that are achieving the same things that you wanna achieve in similar ways. Not the same 'cause you're unique and your work's gonna be unique, but in similar ways that you're gonna achieve it. I think that those are your colleagues, those are your peers. Those are the people that you do need to compare yourself to. What you don't wanna do is flip through Twitter and compare yourself to 200 people at the same time 'cause that's gonna leave you feeling in crazy self-doubt. What you don't wanna do is compare yourself to someone who does something dramatically different to you, who achieves things that you never wanna achieve. Because if you compare yourself to someone who has different strengths and is achieving things that you don't even wanna achieve, you're always gonna be miserable. Because no matter how hard you work, you're never gonna achieve the things they do and you'll always feel like you don't measure up. So that's where it goes with comparison. But I think jealousy is one of the hearts, one of the hearts of self-doubt. And so I think you gotta become acquainted with what you're good at, why what you're good at matters and develop those things and be aware that things are gonna try to tear that down for you and believe in that work. And the more you believe in your work and the more you believe in the task at hand, the more motivation and confidence you're gonna have. And when you have motivation and confidence, you can achieve something significant, like a successful career in the arts. So that is my self-doubt talk. That's my peppy talk for this morning. I hope that it just pumps you up like crazy. If you wanna listen to this talk online, go ahead and check out illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. I just wanted to say thank you for the reviews on iTunes. There was someone who just did a review and it was absolutely lovely. It made my day, thank you. If you're a fan of the podcast and you've given a review, just know that that means tons to me. I do read 'em and you know what? Definitely helps me feel like I'm kind of going towards that why and I'm making progress on that. It means tons to me. I love it and I appreciate everybody out there who's been supporters of Creative Peptalk and believes in this goal of helping artists, helping especially freelance artists and people that wanna make their own way. I mean, even in companies, if you have your own vision of why you wanna be an artist, how we can help you have the strategy and the ideas and the vision to achieve those big goals, those big significant achievements as an artist. And if you believe in that and you believe in the podcast, I thank you for all the people that have been tweeting and Instagramming and putting it on Tumblr and Facebook. You guys are awesome, really appreciate it. And until later this week, I think probably Thursday, stay Pept up, see you later. (upbeat music) Hey y'all, one more quick thing. Earlier this year, I rebuilt my website using Squarespace's new fluid engine and I was so pumped about how it turned out that I have been really thrilled to find as many ways to partner with them and tell you about what they can do and bring you discounts as possible. With social media going haywire, I think having a site that feels as unique as your creative work is essential to building trust with your target audience or your clients. I have had several clients point out how cohesive and fresh my site looks lately. And if you wanna check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out AndyJPizza.com. If you wanna test it out, go to squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out yourself. And when you're ready to launch, use promo code PEPTALK for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. (upbeat music) - I did consider Barney a friend and he's still a friend to this day. - The idea of Barney is something that I want to live up to. You know, I love who you love me. I call it the purple mantra. Barney taught me how to be a man. - Generation Barney, a podcast about the media we loved as kids and how it shapes us. Listen wherever you get your podcast. (upbeat music)