Shaking Self Doubt

Self Doubts
This afternoon I returned home from a wonderful weekend in the mountains with Jim followed by brunch with some artist friends. It was an excellent weekend. [photo above taken on a beautiful drive we took on saturday].
Not long after returning home I found myself in a less than happy mood full of the type of self doubts that rarely rear their ugly head anymore. Keeping a gratitude journal and focusing on all the positive things in my life the past year has really helped keep me grounded.
But for some reason this afternoon my mind was saying something like this:
Why are you making art? Why not just go to the day job and come home and relax? Making art is a lot of work and what do you have to show for it? Why are you building a studio? Do you really think you deserve a huge new studio in this economy? Why are you making art anyway? What value does it have? Why do you think you can sell it and live off your art? Get real.
etc, etc. I suspect most artists can relate.
I knew I was headed in a bad direction that could bring art production to a halt for the week and possibly the month, if I continued to have this little pity party for myself.
So I took a nap since I lack motivation to do anything else. I woke up in the same mood.
So I called a friend and whined. They were supportive as they could be but I was being annoying and this little pity party wasn’t going to go away after a few nice words. This was my responsibility to end, not someone else.
Score One for My Mind
So I thought to myself: you have been here before and you have 2 choices. Let this win and spend the entire evening/week/month online doing nothing or maybe you could try something different and just get over yourself.
So I went to my studio and just got to work making art. I wandered off after 10 minutes but pulled myself back to the studio after a bit. I was determined that even if I couldn’t shake the feeling I was going to at least get something done.
I was in a pretty pissy mood and had plenty of negative thoughts and it was rough going at first. I tried to think of something I was grateful for and could think of nothing. Eventually I got the focus to interrupt the stream of negativity and reminded myself how much I love to make art and slowly I could bring in other things I was grateful for.
My mantra was "Art is valuable, My art is valuable". I started repeated it over and over again when I caught my mind having a little pity party.
I also asked myself what I was gaining by thinking all these negative thoughts. I can’t say I came up with a good answer for this but I did decide I wasn’t gaining anything I wanted and that helped to put an end to the unpleasantness in my head.
After 3 1/2 hours the positive thoughts won and the self doubt and negative voice was put back in the box as it doesn’t serve me right now. Yay.
I’m really excited about the textile painting I was working on and Home #2 should be done tomorrow and I’ll post a photo of it.
Posted by Lisa in: Being an Artist
Tagged: choices, making art, Motivation, self doubt
















