🎨3 Things that held me back

Read time 13 minutes

Dec 29, 2024

What a privilege it is to connect with you!

This edition will boost your confidence in yourself and your art.

More specifically, it’s a guide to overcoming 3 specific fears that would certainly hold us back, unless they are confronted and defeated.

How Artists can overcome 3 fierce fears:

Fear of The Shadow-self
Fear of Abundance
Fear of the Unknown

Let’s go back in time to when fear started to take over my mind and heart. The first stronghold of this fear was slowly progressing to low self-worth, then anger, followed by huge mistakes. And finally, a period of despair.

That’s when I knew I needed to change.

🖁 It was the mid-1990s.

Cell phones were starting to become a regular thing.

And these were not the kind we have now, of course.

They were for emergency purposes.

I bring this up to share part of my story.

In the world of rural Appalachia, without the aid of free education so wonderfully distributed on the internet now, teenagers just sort of learned things first-hand. We might have had help from a good person here or there. But, book learning at the library was the other alternative. And then, later of course, college… if one was deemed ready —by the scores, admin, and mentors.

I was NOT college material for 3 big reasons:

I didn’t want to go to college… a 5-year plan was a joke to me
My grades said, ‘this delinquent shouldn’t go to college’
And some ill-meaning people stated I was not smart enough

At the time, because of the domino effect of losing family, friends, and (to a small degree) my faith, I completely lost the will to excel in anything at all.

Not a pretty time in my life.

I’d neglected the gift of being trained in art (by a fantastic teacher)
I’d lost my self-confidence
I’d actively neglected the long-term for short-term life

In my return-to-life journey, I learned to overcome 3 fears.

These fears had kept me bound to a shallow, powerless life.

“Fear is a mile wide and an inch deep.” ~Leila Hormozi
Often what scares us is an illusion. When we step forward to overcome our fear, we realize that it is no big deal.

Let’s skip ahead a few years.

Although blood, sweat, and tears taught me what I’m about to share, they are not what make the story important. The results are what make it worth sharing.

These fears are not uncommon. I want to share how to get through them.

Again, they are:

Fear of The Shadow self
Fear of Abundance
Fear of the Unknown

Fear of The Shadow self

Art resides within each of us.

People are unique, because we operate with imagination, to build creative work and progress humanity.

Art is the focal point, leveraging these advancements.

But, I digress.

Back to how I learned to overcome fear. . .

The curiosity of creating art was always beckoning. A muse. A calling.

I’m sure you hear it too. Like a song.

Our art is so many things. But for sure, it’s an expression of what we are, how we feel, what we believe, and what we care about.

It’s us.

Therefore, the unconscious parts of us are also revealed in our art.

I was scared about that.

Scared about my dark side.

I felt scared about imperfection.

My mistakes in the past were so critical and awful.

So, I stuffed my art down.

I would not embrace ME because I was scared of who I was.

Here is what I learned about that:

We are all given the chance to live well. Therefore, we control our thoughts. We all have negativity within us. The only way to overcome that is not by hiding from it but by recognizing it… sitting with it… and understanding it.

We are not our thoughts.

They are a tool.

A fantastic tool, to help us make sense of things.

To see, feel, and create.

Two books that beautifully represent the realness and fear of our shadow side are

Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl
The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The second book is way harder to get through (and I did not get through it, but it affected me just the same).

Our potential as humans is that we could become monsters. And that’s the scary part. But keeping our minds, hearts, and bodies healthy by not hiding from the truth, is THE WAY to overcome.

That’s when we get to the other side and know who we are.

When we stare down our fear and tell it that it won’t control us, we get to call the shots.

Fear of Abundance

“Fear of Abundance” is my way of labeling imposter syndrome.

Imposter Syndrome: “the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills.”

Imposter syndrome acts as a moment that suddenly crops up in the mind. It tells you you’re not worth it. Or others should get credit. Or “you’re a fraud”.

And it happens to everyone who tries to better themselves or their situations. The brain wants you to stay in your comfort zone. And it will kinda bully you back into it every chance it gets.

(The brain is trying to keep us safe, but it’s like a computer acting how it was programmed. Its objective is not about self-actualization… it’s still thinking there’s a lion outside our tent).

How imposter syndrome manifests in our life:

Feeling we don’t deserve where we’ve gotten (although we worked hard to get there)
Crediting anything and anyone else to our success
Being self-critical (in ways we would NEVER do to someone else)
Avoiding promotions
Working way too much to try to prove to ourselves that we are worthy of success
Circular thought patterns about small mistakes… punishing ourselves easily

I talk about this in a previous letter, but here are the 6 steps that help me instantly overcome imposter syndrome:

When you feel imposter syndrome creeping into your head:

P U M P E D

P- pause and breathe in and out slowly

U- understand what you’re going through without judging it

M- move your body, even a little bit

P- play in your mind the series of successes you’ve earned

E- entertain another thought… anything else

D- discover that you made it through

With any progress, imposter syndrome will come back. But it gets easier to beat over time.

Fear of the Unknown

This was the hardest one for me.

And it took the longest.

It was only possible to overcome the fear of the unknown after I had gotten over the first 2 fears.

Here’s how you can do it faster:

recognize your ability to use imagination for the good
don’t allow fear of the future to circulate in the mind
don’t allow fear of the past to circulate in the mind
visualize how you want to be in the future, your ideal self
repeatedly use imagination to visualize good outcomes for everything

It’s a brain workout.

I’d recommend giving yourself at least 3 minutes a day to actively visualize a good future.

Sometimes attaching a symbol to this vision helps. So whenever you think of that symbol, you picture a great future.

Here’s the thing. For myself, I didn’t even KNOW when I was worrying or had circular patterns of negative thought. It took time to recognize them. And from there, it took time to practice stopping those thoughts without self-criticizing. Lastly, I needed to reverse the negative thinking with powerfully good thinking.

AND YOU CAN DO THIS TOO!

One book that helped me overcome fear this was The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle.

I read it aloud on YouTube a year ago, just a few pages a day, live. And it took 80 days.

Mastering these fears will set you free in ways that will surprise you.

You’ll be freer to create art. And the immense clarity from overcoming these fears will keep you on cloud 9.

HERE’S a RECAP

Fear of The Shadow self- overcome this with personal, curated education, and by facing our fullest self, not stuffing ourselves into a box of ‘perfection’
Fear of Abundance- overcome this by understanding imposter Syndrome and using a technique to push you to the other side (such as the PUMPED technique)
Fear of the Unknown- reverse this fear by using your imagination for good, by visualization every day

If you’ve ever felt unsure about your direction as an artist, I can help.

Here are a few ways:

1️⃣ Uncover Your Why: Get crystal clear on the deeper purpose behind your art. Your “why” becomes the foundation for everything you create.

2️⃣ Create a Legacy Collection: Plan and craft a meaningful body of work that tells your unique story—and resonates for years to come.

3️⃣ Advance Your Art Business: Build a strategy and actionable plan to grow your business, connect with your audience, and achieve your goals.

Whether you’re just starting out or ready to elevate your work to the next level, my programs are designed to bring clarity, confidence, and success to your art journey.

Let’s make your vision a reality. Reply here, book a call, or click HERE to connect!

Soft pastel VIDEO

Here’s a soft pastel video that I made in early 2024. In this, follow along to create an impressionism-style landscape. You can use your own photo, if you like.

Here are suggested art supplies:

Soft pastel pencils
Soft pastel hand-rolled in your favorite colors (you can buy these individually)
Pastel paper
Artist tape
Workable fixative (For the end final piece. Take it outside. Spray it 3 times, starting off of the paper, sweeping through, and ending off the paper. Do this once vertically. Once horizontally. Once diagonally. Let it dry for about 2 minutes before bringing it back indoors.)

Joyful Artist's Musings

Discussion about this post