Designers - Don’t waste your life on pessimism.

I used to use drink and drugs to mask the fact that I was terrified of failing, but really I was terrified of trying.

For me, drinking was the pessimist, the ‘it’s too hard to try so I won’t even bother’, it’s easy to be mediocre.

It’s too hard to try to get better at something, so I’ll just waste time on beer and only put in 5% effort.

As a creative business owner, we need to be very aware of pessimism, it’s an insidious nasty trait that we are stoked on when we’re young and rebellious but doesn’t serve us when we’re older.

Pessimism can come in the form of drinking to cope or to mask our real ambitions, it can come from talking shit on other designers for doing more than us.

It can come from punching up on people who are just like us, but a few months/years/decades along on the journey.

Or punching down on those who copy our reel ideas (no names mentioned here of course).

It can be the - that person just got lucky that’s why they’re so successful.

They’re really rich, they must be unhappy in their life.

They went viral so they can stuff off! I’m better than them.

T O T A L B U L L S H I T.

None of that serves you.

See as a designer, we need confidence, we need to believe in ourselves and our decisions because if we doubt ourselves, the client will too.

The confidence we seek, won’t come from being a pessimist, because the pessimist is too afraid to try, they are so afraid of failure they won’t even start.

They’ll throw rocks at you for even trying just a little, because they wish they could be trying like you.

For me, It was an epiphany, I could spend my whole life ‘wishing’ i was doing something and romanticizing the position I was in *like a lot of drinkers do*...

Or I could channel that energy into something worthwhile, I could use it for good.

I could change the person I was, I could leave those traits behind, I could grow into someone new.

Someone confident.

A lot of designers ask me about how they can be more confident - to charge more for branding projects, to sell brand strategy, to speak their mind on social media.

It comes from ditching the old you.

Ditching the pessimist who is to scared to try.

Becoming an optimist.