I am one of those people that suffers terribly from intimidation. It happens whenever I'm talking to someone I admire about my work, or if I feel the person I'm talking to has more experience and knowledge than I do, I turn into a blob of confusion, where my vocabulary turns into a morse code of umms urghhs and I think sos. I'm just not good at it, honestly I just can't handle the pressure!
When I'm with my clients, friends, family or just an admirer of my work I'm totally fine and can blah blah blah on about my work for hours. However if your someone I've worked for in the past or someone who's work I admire, I shut down, turn into some kind of wilting wallflower and end up sounding like some kind of mindless zombie who doesn't know which way is up. It's a disgusting habit and I wish I could just shake it off but I get so attached to my work that even constructive criticism translates to "We hate this" in my brain.
I know this is a difficult industry to survive and flourish in, but the emotional workout I get on a daily basis is exhausting!
First of all you constantly judge yourself and doubt your abilities, especially if you receive and kind of negative comment on your work because you feel it directly attacks who you are as a person (yes I know this is stupid but that's how I feel). Secondly you constantly question yourself, you compete in your head with not only other designers but your own personal work, you find yourself asking, "is this as good as I can do? Why isn't this better? Is that person/brand better than I am and why? Should I even continue doing this? Do people even want me to keep doing this? Shouldn't I be doing more?" And honestly all this craziness in your head is probably what pushes you to work harder and produce better product but at what point do you just pump the brakes and say "I'm doing ok, I m giving it my best and I'm learning and growing every day". I think it's important to stop for just a few minutes every day and reassure yourself because let's face it, if you don't have any faith in yourself, how can you expect other people to? I'm sure my field is not the only one laced with a plethora of emotions, everyone will have days where they feel they are making headway in life and that they are "succeeding" but we all have the days when we feel like everyone's telling us our work is crap and you may as well be a check out chick at Coles for the rest of your days because that's all you're capable of, but if I can give you some advice that I've picked up from dealing with these deamons, don't listen to the haters! They are only put in your life by the universe to make sure you stay motivated to be better than yesterday and rather than beating yourself up over something that was said, these comments should be reconstructed into your head as motivational "you go girl" banners. Whatever your dreaming of and whatever you want to achieve, you can do it, but you just need to believe you can first!
