Believe in Yourself

Sometimes one of our biggest challenges as an artist is actually believing in ourselves… in our skills… in our goals… in our ability to create. So, our next watercolor wisdom - lessons I’ve learned through watercolor that can be applied to life – is…

Believe in yourself…

In today’s world of social media, how often do we measure our value or the success of a painting by the number of likes or comments we got on a post? Sadly, we do this more often that we’d like to admit. As an artist, I use social media to share my work. I create art that I hope will connect viewers to nature… to God… to something bigger than themselves. I want my art to be a source of calm and joy and peace and inspiration. So, when I put it into the world via social media, I want to see responses and confirmation. I want others to believe in me. But that isn’t what happens. People like to scroll, and they don’t always stop to “like” or to comment on a post. So, most of the time, we never really know what people are thinking of our work. So how do we handle that? How do we prevent ourselves from shutting down and no longer posting?

Well, I did just that. I haven’t posted in a while on social media. Mentally, it was beginning to pull me down because the responses weren’t there, and that, in turn, was impacting how I viewed myself and especially my art. But just this week in a peer group of fellow artists, we discussed this exact topic and how challenging social media can be to our perspective.

But social media doesn’t determine our value. And we need to get that into our heads, don’t we? The truth is that we need to believe in ourselves. Roy T. Bennett is quoted as saying, “Believe in your infinite potential. Your only limitations are those you set upon yourself.”

WE are our biggest obstacles. WE stop moving forward because we put our value in what other people think rather than in what we think. So, let’s turn that thinking upside down. Let’s begin believing in our “infinite potential…” whatever that might be. If I like my painting and connect to my painting, there are others out there in the world who will like it and connect to it as well. I need to believe in my work and know that people are seeing it and enjoying it whether they like or comment on my post or not. Believing in myself and my work is of the upmost importance to the success of my art. And that’s what truly matters.

Believe in yourself, my friends. You are amazing and have a lot to offer. Go fiercely forward into the world, believing in your “infinite potential.”