💎 Friday Gems - The Creative Confidence Issue
"Don't expect victory or defeat. Plan for victory, learn from defeat. The expectation of people loving you or respecting you is a pointless exercise." - Gary Joseph Bishop
Hey all!
I’m kicking off a new issue of this week’s Friday Gems in which I share posts, videos, quotes to a single topic. This week’s issue is dedicated to the topic of creative confidence.
Why creative confidence? Because it is a critical part of our journey in life. Approaching each moment with a beginner’s mind, leaning into our fear and anxiety, seeking feedback, and using curiosity as our guide, we can show up and lean into each moment with intention and authenticity to reach our full potential.
Hit reply and let me know what you think about this new issue.
On to this week’s creative confidence gems.
Today's Gems 👀
🤘🏽 Embrace feedback as a gift
🌱 Embrace being a beginner
🙌🏽 Embrace Failure as a form of success
😅 Embrace Anxiety as a gateway to creativity
💜 The Mindful Designer: How to spark your curiosity, scientifically
👀 A creative confidence manifesto
Creative Confidence
💜 Embrace feedback as a gift
Feedback is not just about criticism or negative comments. It encompasses a wide range of perspectives, opinions, and observations from others about our actions, behavior, and performance.
Feedback is a gift.
Whether it is in the form of positive encouragement or constructive criticism, feedback is an invaluable gift for developing our creative confidence. The idea that criticism is helpful was a challenging idea for me to wrap my head around because in my mind all criticism was bad. Not until I separated the negative and harsh comments that are intended to hurt us from the positive and encouraging feedback did I realize the power of feedback for personal growth and self-improvement.
We can go about our days oblivious to how our actions, behaviors and performance are affecting ourselves and others but once we open up to feedback from the people we trust, it can lead to clarity and profound positive effects on our mental health and wellbeing.
By accepting feedback as a gift and leveraging it for positive change, we empower ourselves to lead more fulfilling and mentally healthy lives. So, the next time you receive feedback, embrace it with gratitude and curiosity, for it may hold the key to unlocking your full potential.
Asking for feedback may seem scary at first but using it as tool for our personal growth it becomes clear that feedback is in fact a gift.
Now the question is, who can you ask to provide you feedback?
✊🏽
🔗 The Gift of Feedback: How Embracing Constructive Criticism Enhances Mental Health by Kind Mind Psychology
Creative Confidence
💜 Embrace being a beginner
If you’ve ever learned something new, you can remember what that’s like: you’re probably confused, because you don’t know how to do whatever you’re learning, but you’re also looking at everything as if it’s brand new, perhaps with curiosity and wonder. That’s beginner’s mind.
As we gain knowledge and develop our skills we start to assume things with certainty. We hold on to stories our minds create instead of seeing things as they actually are. We overlook, assume, and carry around preconceived notions the world around us.
Developing a beginner’s mind helps us lead with curiosity and openness without the fear or judgement which helps develop our creative confidence.
You can practice developing a beginner’s mind right now by looking at an object close by and paying close attention to it. See the shape, feel the texture, examine the details, hold the object if you can or touch it and see it with all your senses.
A beginner’s mind helps us stop taking things, people, and the world around us for granted and helps us transform the ordinary into the awe inspiring wonder all around us in this very moment.
🔗 Approaching Life with Beginner's Mind by Zen Habits
Creative Confidence
💜 Embrace failure as a form of success
Whether it’s a missed opportunity, a business venture gone awry, or a personal setback, failure is a universal phenomenon. Rather than viewing it as a dead-end, we should consider failure as a feedback mechanism — an opportunity to learn, adapt, and evolve.
Failure is a key ingredient to developing our creative confidence.
This is not glamorizing failure, but seeing failure’s inherent transformative power to provide us the knowledge and insights to help guide us in the right direction.
Rather than viewing it as a dead-end, we should consider failure as a feedback mechanism — an opportunity to learn, adapt, and evolve.
Creative confidence arises in us when we stop seeing failure as a reflection on ourselves and our abilities and opening up to the valuable message it provides us to help direct us toward our goals.
As we navigate the complexities of life, let us embrace failure with open arms, recognizing its ability to shape us into more resilient, creative, and adaptable individuals.
🔗 Power of Failure by Ria Vanessa Caliste
Creative Confidence
😅 Anxiety is a gateway to creative confidence
Instead of seeing anxiety as something to run or hide from, what if we learned to trust our anxiety and gave it the role of our muse guiding us towards our unique creative expression?
Creative Confidence
📆 A Creative Confidence Manifesto
YOU MUST ENJOY THE PROCESS
SHAME IS NOT SUSTAINABLE
DERIVE AS MUCH PLEASURE AS POSSIBLE IN THE PROCESS
YOU GENERATE YOUR OWN MAGIC
WORK IN INTENTIONAL CONTAINERS OF TIME
THE ACT OF LIVING INTENTIONALLY IS A CREATIVE PROCESS IN ITSELF
YOUR CREATIVE PROJECT IS A FRAGILE LIVING ENTITY THAT MUST BE FED TIME, ATTENTION, SPACE, ACTIVE CARE, ENTHUSIASM, STRUCTURE, EXCITEMENT UNTIL IT IS READY TO THRIVE IN THE WORLD ON ITS OWN INDEPENDENT OF YOU
FOCUS ON GENERATING THE WORK AND TRUST THAT THE SOLUTIONS WILL COME
LOVING YOUR WORK AND BELIEVING IN YOUR WORK AND COMMITTING TO YOUR WORK IN TANGIBLE, CONCRETE WAYS ARE ONE HUNDRED PERCENT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY, ALWAYS
THE WORST CASE SCENARIO IS UNLIVED POTENTIAL, NEVER FAILURE, BECAUSE FAILURE IS STILL A SUCCESS, AN ATTEMPT AT SOMETHING THAT REVEALS MORE VALUABLE INFORMATION FOR THE NEXT TIME YOU DO IT AGAIN
Source: Unknown
Creative Confidence
🌏 Embrace curiosity
Think about how something works, take it apart to test it. Manipulate something and prove some physical principle to yourself. Put the human back in technology.
Instead of assuming things are a certain way, what if we opened ourselves up to new possibilities by leaning in to our curiosity so we can uncover new ideas and opportunities.
In this Ted talk, experimental physicist Nadya Mason emphasizes the need to experiment with the world around us instead of sitting on the sidelines and being passive consumers, especially as technology takes over our lives, I’m look at you AI.
By developing an experimentation mindset we can overcome our fear of failure while continually trying new approaches on our way to building our creative confidence.
🔗 How to spark your curiosity, scientifically by Naday Mason/Ted
Wisdom
💡 Spark your curiosity
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world…”
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity….Don’t stop to marvel.
— Albert Einstein
💡 Judge your work, not yourself!
That’s it for this week’s Friday Gems.
May curiosity be your guide!
