Today’s territory, that common issue:

Mirror, Mirror
Doubt, Self-reflection, and 5 ways to move from one to the other.

For all of us, self-doubt is challenging. For anyone who needs to have confidence in their own vision and voice, it can be excruciating. Getting lost in doubt and second-guessing can derail art-making and debilitate the artist. Yech.
So why do we start  it, and keep on doing it?

A simple answer: Self-doubt occurs when the natural flow of information we swim in becomes stagnant, and we only allow certain kinds of information in.
New information doesn’t enter; and what we hear, which is untrue and imbalanced, keeps repeating in a loop.
When we get trapped in doubt and self-criticism, we have stepped between mirrors that reflect this untruth back and forth on itself, until the dissonant feedback is all we can hear.      Then we accept the fact that our art is worthless, our time past, our friends well-meaning caretakers, our collectors deluded. (As in “Jeeesh. All this time all six billion people on the planet were colluding just to make me feel bad…” Now, does that sound right?)

We’re trapped between mirrors that reflect incomplete, inaccurate data back and forth.
The mirrors reflect each other.
They do not reflect us. They do not reflect our actions or our creativity.
They do not reflect our potential or our future, just each other.

Step away from the mirrors.
Master them: use them to reflect outward, to see you in your world.

Get out from between the negative feedback.
You stepped in there, you can step out.
Of course you can.

So: Five practical tools to get you out from between the mirrors and back into your own life.

1. For immediate intervention: raise your eyes and take deep, slow breaths.
Let each one out slowly, and repeat. Breathe more slowly each time, and see if you can feel the breath expanding ever so slightly lower and lower in your body, until you can feel the skin on the soles of your feet soften and open.  If possible, do this barefoot. Feel your breath first, concentrate just on filling your body with breath, all the way down to your feet. The mirrors are revealed as illusions, because this breath is what you feel. Physiologically, slow deep breaths activate a cascade of positive calming reactions that stop the mental deadlock going on in your poor harassed head.

2. Ask a friend for a reality check.
Make sure it is someone you feel safe around, and whose confidence you admire. The longer you’ve known them the better. Tell them what is going on, because often we are sooooo trapped in the trance of the mirrors we assume everyone else sees what we see. But they don’t. The more honest and vulnerable you are willing to be about where you are standing, metaphorically, the more firmly your friend can take your arm and pull you away from the mirrors. (This is why the friend must be someone you trust) The better they know you, the more they can keep moving you away when you start in again with the ‘But this time it’s really true…’ stuff.

3. Leave the vortex.
Get real active now. Physically change what you are doing. Best option: Dance vigorously to loud music you love. Just imagine this: kicking your shoes off, turning the volume up, getting sweaty, even for five or ten minutes. I am smiling writing about it. Second best option: Put your tools down, they’re not going anywhere, and go away right now. Go somewhere you haven’t been before, with other people to talk to, even if it is just a different coffee shop than usual. Force yourself to make eye contact, smile, listen to them, interact with other mammals of all species.

4. Play games with your mind
A fair amount of doubt and self-criticism is repetitive thinking, endlessly circulating programmed thoughts.  They are just there because you (sorry but it’s true) are in the habit of buying into them when they show up. Break the habit. When you become aware that you haven’t had a new thought, let alone an accurate one, for some time, try these games in your head, not on paper, that’s very important :
• Recite the state capitals. (Do your best…) • Spell peoples’ names backwards • Do multiplication: start slow, increase digits • Add the numbers of the Fibonacci series •  Look around you and mentally list exactly what you are seeing (in this restaurant each table has five wine glasses, coral placemats, two forks and two knives but no spoon, grey caned chairs with white cushions) being very specific • Invent new games that give your mind something new to do. Let me know them.

5. Get accurate research.
Use self-reflection. Given where I am now, where do I want to go next?
This one is to do after you have done other things and are mostly out from between the mirrors. Be careful that your tricky mirrors don’t grab on and try to limit what you take in. Look around at everything going on right now in your field. Some of it is much worse, some of it is better. All of us are somewhere in the middle, and deep inside we know it. It’s why we want to grow and innovate. It does not mean “I am not good enough”, it means “I am here, right now”. How could you be anywhere else? I garauntee you that even people at the top of their game are thinking of where would be even better; they have a sense of where to go next. Just like you do.

Self-reflection is the opposite of doubt.
Accurate reflection lets us know where we are, and where to go.
Be the observer of what is in the mirror, not its inhabitant.

Use the mirror to show you an accurate reflection of you, in your world, right now.
Take it in, then take your next step.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Until next time
All my best for your creative endeavours-

Exploring in art as in life,
Tory

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