You want to know why you don’t get things done? Behind the procrastination, the laziness, the insecurity…you know what the root of it all leads to? Fear. But you’re thinking about it all wrong. Fear is not your enemy. Fear is a healthy response. Fear keeps you cautious. Fear makes you careful. People think you have to be fearless to be creative, to make art, but that’s not true.
How many of us like to tell people we’re perfectionists? Well don’t fool yourself: Perfectionism is holding you back. Perfectionism is the fear that what you are, or what you have made, is not good enough, not worthy enough, to be let loose into the world. And we have to stop bragging about it.
All artists, no matter how good they are, have to deal with jealousy and envy. You will see a peer do something you wish you could, and you will feel a pang of loss deep in your gut. That’s normal. Let me be straight with you: no artist I have ever met — no person really, forget just artists — have been able to stop that first gut reaction. But, what we can do is stop it from obsessing us.
