artist confidence | overcoming insecurity
How to build your confidence as a creative person
Why do we experience insecurity, perhaps especially as artists? What can help?
“Your creative success depends on you having a strong belief in your own creative ability.” — Therapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz
“Self-esteem is your evaluation of your own worth…This attitude toward your self affects every decision you make and everything you do.” — Therapist Julie Bjelland
What can lead so many creative people, even those who are highly talented, accomplished and acclaimed, to experience insecurity, unhealthy self-regard, and uncertainty about the value of their work?
One example: Helen Mirren has portrayed many confident, even imperious, women in her long and successful career.
But personally, she has experienced insecurity throughout her life.
She emphasized in an interview that it should be called “experienced” rather than “suffered” — a helpful framing of what is often perceived as only a negative feeling.
“I’m beginning to get a bit fed up of all this ‘suffering’. But yes, I have experienced insecurity all my life, and I still do on a daily basis.”
(From interview article: “Helen Mirren: ‘I have experienced insecurity all my life’” By Celia Walden, The Telegraph, 17 FEB 2018.)
Insecurity can be challenging and self-limiting, but if we label it — and other so-called “negative” feelings as an experience we are having, not suffering from, we may shift how those feelings impact us.
In a trailer for her online course, Mirren says “Acting is all about what’s happening within you.”
See video and more in article: Helen Mirren Teaches Acting — a MasterClass.
One of the more important “things happening inside” for actors — or really any of us — is our level and quality of confidence and healthy self-regard.
John Lennon once expressed a perspective on some of the self esteem challenges experienced by many creative people:
“Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.”
He also said: “There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things other people didn’t see.”
Therapist Sharon Barnes works with creative, sensitive, intense and/or gifted teens and adults, and hears from many of them statements like Lennon made.
She has developed a home-study video program to help creative people.
See more in my article: Creative people can feel “There’s something wrong with me.”
Actor Mira Sorvino has talked about some of the thinking and feeling that can drive our insecurity and self-condemning inner messages:
In an interview after winning an Academy Award (1996) for Mighty Aphrodite, she commented:
“As a youth, I hated myself for not being good enough.
“All my inadequacies and failures, not being kind enough, generous or understanding enough, would assail me at night.
“It became a habit to be guilty and self-castigating, not liking myself because I was unworthy. There was no exit.”
She added, “I always had to be better, constantly never letting myself say ‘Mira, you’re okay.’ I really tortured myself.
From article Gifted and Talented but Insecure.
Can we learn to feel more confident? Can we more fully use our rich emotional landscape and imaginations for creative work?
Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Psy.D., LMFT helps creative people in TV/Film, performing and fine arts.
She addresses confidence and other issues for artists in multiple articles on her site.
She writes in one of her articles about an artist feeling “a flood of creative ideas” at times.
“All you want to do is to express your creative energy… It might still be unformed and raw, but you already sense the different beautiful threads been uncovered.”
She notes in moments like this, “you feel focused and present”… And even if you don’t know where your ideas might take you, you have confidence that you’ll get somewhere.”
But, she continues, “as an artist you don’t always live in this confident, connected, creative space.”
Especially in a highly competitive arts career, “ Your self-esteem is challenged at every turn “ — often in ways beyond your control.
“You don’t always get the audition. You don’t always get to sell your script. You don’t always get to be on the stage. You don’t always get to have your show.”
She points out:
“Your creative success depends on you having a strong belief in your own creative ability. …
“ But how can you stay confident in your art in a career that is filled with obstacles that challenges your self-esteem at every corner?
“Ground yourself in reality while you can still live in the realm of your artistic dreams…”
Continue reading her article for more specific suggestions: How to Preserve Your Confidence as You Navigate Your Artistic Career
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Confidence to speak up
An interviewer asked actor Kristin Kreuk :
“More and more frequently, women in this business seem to feel more confident about taking charge of their career, their projects, their characters, and finding their own voice, as a producer.
“When do you feel like you really found that voice and that confidence to speak up, not just for yourself, but the characters that you’re playing?”
Kristin Kreuk: “I still don’t feel like I’m very good at that and I still have a long way to go.
“I was so scared for so long. On Smallville [her TV Series 2001–2011], there came a point where I finally got the courage to give my opinion on something, and it was so hard.
“I remember being on the phone with the producers and stating my opinion, and then quietly crying. I was so terrified to voice anything.
“And from that point on, it’s been a slow process of becoming more and more confident, speaking up, and having people listen to me.”
She comments about acting in her current series ‘Burden of Truth’ and how it has helped her confidence:
“Before this show, I had gone out and started pitching some of my own ideas, that I brought to eOne, who is akin to the studio on this.
“I mentioned my own stuff and they were like, ‘Yeah, maybe not. But here are some ideas of ours that we have in development. Do any of these resonate for you?’
“I was able to select from a bunch of shows that they had and find something that really moved me, and then go from there with them. That felt like a huge step forward. I obviously have a long way to go, but this is a really good step for me, in the right direction.”
From article : “Kristin Kreuk on ‘Burden of Truth’ and the Challenges of Playing a High-Powered Lawyer” By Christina Radish, Collider July 25, 2018.
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Feeling self-doubt around confident people
Natalie Portman graduated from Harvard University in 2003, and gave a commencement speech to the Harvard graduating class of 2015.
(See video in article Do Creative People Feel More Insecure?)
She has talked about dealing with the intense confidence of many of the students at Harvard and feeling as though she could never measure up.
“I believed every one of them,” she said of students who aspired to be president. “Their…self-confidence alone seemed proof of their prophecy, where I couldn’t shake my self-doubt.
“I got in only because I was famous; this is how others saw me; it was how I saw myself.”
From article Natalie Portman got super-real about facing “dark times” during her college years By Sammy Nickalls May 28, 2015.
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Self-esteem — what is it?
Julie Bjelland, LMFT is a psychotherapist and author who provides resources to understand the trait and live better as a Highly Sensitive Person.
Many, if not most, artists and creative people have this personality trait.
- On her site, she explains:
“Self-esteem is your evaluation of your own worth and how you feel about your SELF. This attitude toward your self affects every decision you make and everything you do.
“Low self-esteem is a negative self-evaluation and can create self-defeating behaviors. You may become blocked emotionally and have a hard time creating and meeting goals.”
She notes:
“When you increase the way you feel about yourself, you also have more access to your inner resources and navigation tools.
“You feel more empowered to make the best choices for yourself and pick the path that’s right for you rather than accidentally walking on a path that’s not right.”
See many articles in the Blog section of her site:
*Note — The above is an affiliate link to her site, with free material including articles and podcasts, plus products and courses to help highly sensitive people thrive. Her company pays me a commission, if you choose to make a purchase. There is no extra cost to you.
Video: Julie Bjelland on Self Compassion — one of the practices that help us experience healthy confidence and self-esteem.
Self compassion for more confidence
Author and researcher Kristin Neff notes: “We often become our own worst critic because we believe it’s necessary to keep ourselves motivated.
“But the research shows that healthy self-compassion increases our inner drive, our resilience, and our ability to excel. Self-criticism does not build self-esteem by constantly measuring ourselves against everyone else.
“A strong sense of self-compassion is an essential ingredient for success.”
From my article The Power of Self-Compassion.
In the video above, Julie Bjelland shares a technique she learned from Kristin Neff.
Bjelland says self compassion is “something that HSPs [highly sensitive people] really need to work on building because we can be very hard on ourselves by default.”
She says this is “a brain training technique” with a three step process — the “first step is acknowledging the suffering.
“We have to understand that we are hurting or having a hard time in a particular moment for us to acknowledge it and do anything about it.
The second step “is kind of normalizing the experience, validating it, that everybody who may have experienced something like this would feel a similar way.
“The point of it is about validation of the emotion that you’re having which is really important for HSPs because we have often had such powerful emotions in our life and many times can feel different or wrong for some of the emotions that we have.
“But it’s quite normal for an HSP to have magnified emotions.”
She continues: “The third step is that we practice soothing techniques… we can put our hand on our chest, we can do kind of a hugging technique — whatever feels kind of good…and we might use words that feel soothing to us — you know, ‘I’m safe right now,’ ‘I’m gonna get through this, this feeling is temporary…’”
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Michelle Rodriguez on loving yourself — not narcissism
It is worth pointing out that healthy self-care and a supportive and positive attitude about ourselves is not “egotistical” or pathological.
“I don’t think it’s narcissistic at all to love yourself and believe in yourself.
“I think some people are really scared to do that.
“I have to. If I don’t, I would not succeed in what I do.”
Another thoughtful quote of hers:
“My favorite part of my body is my brain. I think no matter what my body looks like, I won’t be satisfied unless I know how to use it.” (Quotes are from her imdb section.)
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Social systems can support and empower — or limit us
Actor Elizabeth Debicki commented about women being successful — especially as filmmakers:
“I was taught by a system that tells women that they should achieve with a kind of humility, and with a kind of silent gratitude, for what we’re given.
“Which actually stung me a bit and made me realize how important it is for me to personally work at shirking that off.”
From article “At Women in Film gala, Issa Rae is loud and proud of her success” By Ashley Lee, Los Angeles Times JUN 13, 2019.
(Photo from article “Elizabeth Debicki is ready to be unlikable,” Financial Review, June 13, 2019.)
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Feeling shame about being an artist
Do you ever feel being a creative artist is “trivial” or “unworthy” of investing so much talent, energy, time and effort?
Over the years of reading interviews with actors, writers and others, I have noticed this topic of shame being brought up by a number of artists and people in creative careers.
Stephen King recalls his high school teacher condemning his writing as “junk” and asking “Why do you want to waste your abilities?”
King admitted in one of his books, “I have spent a good many years since — too many, I think — being ashamed about what I write.”
From my article How to break through creative blocks and get more in touch with our creativity.
“I rushed out of the projection room, ran home and cried for hours. I was really ashamed of myself. It was so awful…”
Myrna Loy (1905–1993) on her screen test for the film Cobra (1923) [imdb.com bio]
“For a long time I was almost ashamed of being an actress. I felt like it was a shallow occupation.” — Winona Ryder [imdb.com bio]
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Resource:
Unconditional Confidence: Instructions for Meeting Any Experience with Trust and Courage — Audiobook, CD, Unabridged by Pema Chödrön. [Affiliate link.]
From Amazon summary:
“Pema Chödrön is one of today’s leading meditation teachers. With more than one million books sold to date, she draws sold-out crowds across the U.S.and Canada.
“On Unconditional Confidence she offers two accessible sessions to help anyone find courage in times of challenge and change.
“Featuring a three-step method for learning to work with uncertainty and fear and an exclusive interview, this liberating program offers practical tools and teachings that explore:
“For us to be of benefit to each other―in times of challenge or any other―we need to be able to tap into genuine confidence,” teaches Pema.
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A few related pages to help support healthy confidence:
How to build self-confidence — includes links to programs by Mel Robbins, The Lefkoe Institute, and more.
Version of above article originally published at http://thecreativemind.net on June 5, 2019.
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Related Medium article of mine:
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