“What if I fail?
Oh but my darling what if you fly?”
~ Erin Hanson
Fear is a challenging emotion. Do you ever feel fear about a project you’re working on? Do you try to concur the emotion? Do you pull up your boots and keep walking through the fear? Or do you give up? And, what is it about having a fear of failing before we we even try?
I am guilty of having the fear of failure. In just about every project I do, I feel some level of anxiety about the outcome. There have been many times that I gave up. There probably have been even more times that I pulled up my boots and walked through the muck.
A lot of creative people carry this fear with them. I think the more experienced you are in facing this demon, the more confident you are in walking through the emotion. How do you get the experience? Like anything, you have to do the work.
This past month I had the opportunity to reflect on my creative journey through a social media challenge with my Instagram account. The prompts in this challenge had me reflecting on my journey. As I was searching through photographs of my earlier days of quilting, I remembered all those strong fear-filled feelings.
What I learned along the way, was to stay true to myself. Not everyone is going to like what I make. We all have our own personal aesthetics and this view is only relevant to the person who owns it. You like something or you don’t. What I’ve also learned (although its not always easy to accept) is that if someone doesn’t like what I made, that doesn’t mean they are judging me. This feeling of personal rejection is were the fear is coming from. Just remember, they are expressing a subjective opinion. So when the fear sets in, just keep those boots on and keep walking (I mean working).