As a creative, I often tell myself a set of lies. Of course, I know that I am not the only one to do this. Reality can sometimes be too harsh to grasp, and one way humans cope with this is by lying to ourselves. And you may wonder why I’m choosing to speak for creatives instead of everyone else. That is because, as an artist, I often find myself in situations where I need to lie to myself, and these are often related to doing creative work or stepping out of my comfort zone. So without further ado, these are the lies I tell myself as an artist/creative
1. I am not procrastinating; I am looking for inspiration
Being a creative is all about coming up with different ideas all the time. And that requires thinking. A lot of it. So, one way to get our creative juices flowing is by exposing ourselves to social media, for example. However, that often leads to procrastination, and after hours of scrolling, I try to convince myself that I didn’t just waste my time, but I was gathering ideas or looking for inspiration instead. It’s a funny dilemma because I know that I am lying to myself, and I am not even that good at doing it.
2. I am not comparing myself to others; I am checking how other creatives are doing to learn from them
As a creative, I love seeing what other creatives are doing. Nothing is more exciting to me than checking on my favourite creative people and appreciating how creative they are. But as much as I love knowing, I often end up feeling really bad about myself and my creativity.
You know the saying: “Creativity is the thief of joy”. And no matter how good you are at staying away from comparison, there are always gonna be people who awaken your insecurity and make you think of not creating again.
3. Jinxing my own work is real
I don’t know how to put this into the right words without sounding crazy. I never allow myself to appreciate my work or think highly of it because I am scared I will jinx my own art. And although I am fully aware that this is a form of sabotage, I can’t seem to stop doing it.
4. If something isn’t instantly a success, it’s a failure
I’ve worked on different forms of creative work for years, and one thing I always notice is that some work isn’t always an instant success. Some creative work requires more marketing, more sharing, more “selling” for it to be a success. However, I only ever care about the creative process, and that makes it hard for me to follow along with the next steps that make or break a work of art.
