Transcripts
1. Introduction: Are you a creative
person struggling with self doubt and feeling like an impostor despite your
talent and hard work? Hi. My name is Hatti Linton, and I'm an artist and
illustrator based in England. I've been exploring my
own creative career alongside my day job in Tech
for the last few years, and I can say that
the feeling of being a fraud or a fake artist
is all too familiar to me. I have sold my art and designs on products
all over the world. I have taken on
huge commissions, both for private
individuals and companies, and I have taught over 1,000 students right
here on Skillshare. And yet, despite all
these accomplishments, which I am very proud of, I still have days where I wake up and feel like
a complete fraud, and I don't belong in
the creative industry. That is what imposter
syndrome is, and that is why this class
is so important to me, and I want to teach you
all about it and how to overcome it and battle
your own inner critic. During these lessons, I will be sharing with you my own
tips and techniques, my personal experiences and
insights to help you build up your confidence and celebrate
your unique artistic voice. We will be covering
understanding imposter syndrome, identifying and reframing
our negative thoughts and negative self talk. We'll be turning those
new positive mindsets into mantras that we can
repeat to ourselves every day. And at the end of the
class, we'll be creating a gorgeous and
personal mantra to display in our creative spaces to remind us all how
fantastic we all are. This class is open to all. Whether you're just
getting started in your creative journey or you've been in the industry
for decades. I'm sure there's
something in this class that's going to be
helpful to you. I can't wait to get
stuck in with you. So let's take a
look at the project you'll be completing at
the end of this class.
2. The Class Project: Before we dive in, let's talk about your project
for this class. At the end of this class,
you're going to be creating your own illustrated
mantra to put pride of place in your creative
space to remind you every day what an amazing and
successful person you are. This mantra will be as unique
and special as you are, and we're going to be
covering ways to come up with the perfect mantra just for
you in an upcoming lesson. Please upload your
class project to the projects and resources
tab of this class. I love to see everything
that my students produce, and I think it'd be
really useful for others to see everybody
else's mantras. When it comes to
creating your mantra, you can do this either digitally using Photoshop or an
iPad and procreate, or you can use more traditional
illustration methods such as ink, pencil, or paint. Up next, we're going
to be covering the best medium for you and what to choose when you
create your mantra.
3. Choosing Your Medium: Over this class, we're going to be discussing
different techniques for identifying and overcoming
your imposter syndrome. We're also going to be creating this beautiful
illustrated mantra for you to have on
hand while you work. This mantra that you're going to be illustrating and
creating yourself can be done either digitally using an iPad and procreate or using more traditional
methods such as pen and pencil or even paint. The important thing to
remember in this class is that you need to be
comfortable creating this. You shouldn't use this
as an opportunity to learn more about procreate or try out a new method such as watercolor that you've
never tried before. I want you to take
this opportunity to create something that you have confidence using so that
when you're creating it, you feel the best
that you can feel. I myself, when I need to make these mantras, I
use pen and ink. I've got a lot of experience and a lot of different media, but for me, pen and ink is
where I'm the most confident. I've got the most of my skill
set, I believe personally. It just means that every time I look at one of these creations, I have this immense
sense of joy and pride. It really helps
bring me back into that creative space and into that mentality of feeling like, I am successful, I am an
artist. I can do this. If by the end of this class, all you want to do is
write your montre down on a posted note and stick it onto your monitor, that's great too. The important thing
is that together, we're going to be tackling
imposter syndrome head on, we're going to be battling it and you're going
to end up with something tangible
for your office, your creative
space, your studio, whatever that place is
that you can look at every single day and feel
good about yourself. The other things that
you're going to need for this class is a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil just so that we can
jot some ideas down. I'll also be talking about
journals later in the class. You might want to have a spa notebook or if you
already have a journal, have your journal
ready, so you can follow along with
those exercises.
4. What is Imposter Syndrome?: What is imposter syndrome? Imposter syndrome is that persistent feeling of I'm a
fraud, I don't belong here. I'm not a true insert job title. Despite there being
evidence to the contrary, you have accomplishments,
qualifications, success, talent, hard work. All of this battles against
this inner critic feeling, this constant monologue
inside your head saying, I'm a fraud, I
don't belong here, and someone's going
to find me out. The term imposter
syndrome was coined by two psychologists in the 1970s, Pauline Rose, lance
and Suan Imes. They originally
observed the concept of imposter syndrome among high
achieving women in the 70s, but it has been since proven to affect anyone of
any walk of life. There are several
common symptoms and feelings associated
with imposter syndrome. Firstly, self doubt,
you constantly question your own ability despite there being evidence
of competence, such as a degree or the work in front
of you being amazing, but you're constantly picking it apart and telling yourself
you're not good enough. Secondly, fear of exposure. This is where you feel like someone's going to find
you out at any point. You don't belong where you are, you're going to get caught. Someone's going to accuse you
of not being a real artist, and you're just
going to have to put your hands up and say,
No, you're right. I'm not. Thirdly, you attribute your success
to external factors. Even though you see the success, you actually put it down
to, well, I got lucky, or that only happened because something else
happened to somebody else, or I only got to
where I am because of that person's ability and they brought me along with them. The fourth one is overworking. You feel the constant need to work harder than anyone
else to prove that you belong where you are despite the fact that you probably belong
there to begin with. Lastly, discounting praise. You can hear the things
people are saying, they love your art, they
love what it is you create. They love everything about you. But you reject it. You assume that they're lying, or they're trying
to get around you, or they're trying
to butter you up, or there's some other
means to why they're giving you the compliments and the praise that you
actually deserve. Why are artists and
other creatives so prone to developing
imposter syndrome? Well, firstly, we
have to look at the subjectivity of art. When you work in a field
that's more scientific, it's a lot easier to actually measure and quantify successes. Because of the
subjectivity of art, it's actually very
hard to stand against other artists and actually
rank them and say, that artist is better
than that artist. It's very hard to put yourself
in that position and say, my art is as good as that artist or that artist is
better than me? It's actually a very,
very difficult area. Similar to that vein, we
have comparison culture. In this world of social media
and constantly looking at other people and
how well they're doing versus how well I'm
doing and all of this, it's actually very difficult to take a step back
and just focus on you yourself and how well you're doing because everything is
being compared to each other. Lastly, feedback and criticism. The nature of art, and I think a lot of creative
fields is that we are subject to criticism and feedback from everyone
from our peers, from actual critics,
from customers. It's a very open market to be widely criticized
quite easily. Then when you combine
that with the social media aspect of things, all you need is someone to be really against your
work and your style, they can't just leave you alone. In this day and age, they
feel the need to get online and tell you how much they
don't like your work. So you see that presumably
coming from one person, and it can really sink in mentally and
make you feel like, well, this must be how
everyone views me and my work. Therefore, I don't belong here. I'm not an artist.
I'm an imposter. Now we have a better
understanding of what imposter syndrome is
and how it manifests. And I'm sure some of those
elements have run true with you as they definitely have
with me over the years. Next, we're going to be covering some different techniques for combating imposter syndrome.
5. Identifying Negative Thoughts: Our first step in combating our negative self talk is
to be able to accurately identify what it is
that we are saying to ourselves and what
those negative thoughts and self talk are. Only by accurately
identifying these thoughts, can we actually fight
against them and turn them into something
positive for the future. When I was going
through some really difficult times over
the last few years, I found that journaling and keeping what's known
as a thought record really helped me to identify the negative things that
I was saying to myself. There are loads of
different ways that you can journal to fit into
your day to day life. There are apps out there for the iPad and the
iPhone and I'm sure on Google Play as well that are specifically about
journaling your thoughts. If you prefer typing
to handwriting, you could even just open
up a Google document and just start writing
your thoughts in there, create a heading for
each day of the week, and then just start jotting your thoughts down
as they come up. Or if you're like me and you prefer the old school
way of journaling, then nothing beats
pen and paper. Whatever method you
choose for journaling, make sure that it
suits you as a person and it's easy to fit into
your day to day life. Once you're in the
habit of journaling, you'll start to recognize when those negative thoughts
start to appear. Try and find a way to identify them or keep a log of them. You will start to see a mixture of maybe there are triggers, what it is that's causing you to have those negative thoughts, what the content or the theme of those
negative thoughts are, and you'll start to see patterns
in your day to day life. For me, personally, I
know social media and the constant comparison culture between myself and my peers is a trigger for my
negative thoughts. It's so easy to look at the
perceived success of somebody through their Instagram
profile and assume that well, my life isn't as good as that, I must be failing in some way. In the next figure, we're
going to be looking at some examples of these
negative thoughts, and we're going to be
looking at ways to reframe them into something more
positive and affirming.
6. Reframing Your Negative Thoughts: Reframing your negative
thoughts can be an incredibly powerful tool
to have at your disposal. Your self confidence will grow both with your work
and outside of your work because
you will be focusing on progress rather
than perfection. Removing the constant
comparison and the negative stream
of consciousness will open you up and
free you up and it will actually alleviate some of your stress surrounding
your work as well. On top of that, even
more importantly, you will find that you
have more mental space for creativity and for the things that you
actually love to do since you won't be full of
the negative self talk. I myself have experienced
all of these effects, and it's incredibly freeing
for my creative practice. How do we go about reframing
a negative thought? We start off by taking
a negative thought, such as, my work
isn't good enough, and we flip the language. This is actually a negative
thought that I personally have experienced many times
over my creative career, and it's come out
of that space of comparing myself to
other people's work. Their work is stunning and
mine doesn't look like that. Therefore, my work
isn't good enough. How do we change the language in this into something positive? It's not enough to just say, my work is good enough because our brains are
smarter than that. You just end up having a
battle in your own head, going back and forth between my work isn't good
enough, and yes, it is and no, it isn't, and you're never going
to win with that. But what we need
to do is we need to identify the language. We need to figure out where this negative thought
is coming from, and we need to basically
attack it at the source. Since this was a
negative thought that I was experiencing myself, I had to go to my journal, and I had to think about why did I think that my
work wasn't good enough. I mean, wasn't it obvious? I was looking at all
these other artists and their success and there stunning pieces of
work and thinking, that's not what my
art looks like. Of course, my art
isn't good enough, my work isn't good enough. I'm not good enough to be compared to these other artists. For a statement like my
work isn't good enough, I can actually reframe that into every artist is unique and my work reflects
me and my journey. Have a good at reframing one of your negative thoughts by
following these simple steps. Step one, write
the thought down. Recognize that this is
a negative thought. Step two, Question yourself. Think about where this emotion or this
feeling comes from. What is it that brought you to feeling this way about
you or your work? Step three, identify
your trigger. Is your trigger like mine? Does it come from comparison? Does it come from fear? Are you distorting
your own successes? Are you diminishing
your successes? Are you putting yourself down? What is it that's
causing you to do that? Step four, explore your trigger. Think about the trigger
and what that means to you and think about the
positives you can take from it. Like my example with
the comparison, explore the idea that
everyone is different, so try and remove the
need for the comparison. Finally, step five, write down
your new reframed thought. In the class resources section, I have shared a list of several negative thoughts
that I've experienced in my creative career and how I
reframe them into something positive for me to take into my day to day creative practice. Next, we're going to be
looking at celebrating the small winds as a method for tackling
impostor syndrome.
7. Celebrate the Small Wins: Now we're going to
look at building up our confidence by
celebrating the small winds. To often we get caught up in the bigger picture,
the ultimate goal, and we sometimes
forget to celebrate all the little
steps that actually get us to that end goal. Ultimately, if we're not
celebrating the small winds, it then becomes
so much harder to achieve that bigger
picture goal. My first tip for celebrating
the small things is to actually set those smaller
and more realistic goals. This doesn't mean that
you shouldn't have a larger end goal in mind, but just by setting smaller goals that are
easier to achieve. It will give you the confidence to keep going after
those bigger goals. It's so easy to get
swept up in the idea of, I'm going to draw every day for a year, when in actual fact, we're not in a daily
drawing habit, and we should be setting a smaller more
achievable goal like, I'm going to draw every
day for five days, or I'm going to draw
every day for a week. To go alongside that,
make sure that you are acknowledging the effort that you are putting
into things, even if you don't
achieve the goals. Celebrate the journey
and the process, not just the outcomes. If you found the
journaling aspect of the identifying your negative
thoughts lesson helpful, then you might consider also having some small winds journal. It works in the
exact same way as a gratitude journal, if
you've ever tried that. You simply write down every day, something that is a small win related to your
creative practice. This could be anything from completing a sketch
to watching a video, trying out something new, learning something
new, anything at all. The point is to take
something every day that no matter how small it is is something that is
worth celebrating. As you log this every day, you start to build up
this inner confidence like building a wall
brick by brick. Eventually, you end up with
this incredibly strong wall. Because you've been reinforcing the message to yourself,
I'm doing great. Look at the amazing
things I'm achieving. Look at all the things
I'm celebrating, and that's ultimately going to make you a more
confident artist. My last tip for building confidence through
small winds is to actually share those wins with your friends, your peers, your co workers, other
creative people you know, which actually brings
us nicely onto our next lesson,
finding your community.
8. Find Your Community: Community is important
in any aspects of life, but it's never more
important than when you're going through
something difficult. I'm the first to admit that this is not an area that I excel in. Social connection is
not a strength of mine, but even I can vouch for the
power of being in a group. Being a member of
and engaging with a supportive community of artists can provide
encouragement and a sense of belonging. It can also be incredibly
helpful from receiving constructive feedback on your
work to sharing resources. Most importantly, it's an opportunity for
you to connect with like minded individuals and wherever you are on
your creative journey, you will find there is someone
else that is either in the exact same boat as you are or they have
been in the past. For me, personally, when
I've discovered that, it's been so useful and so reassuring to
know that I'm not alone. You could join Facebook groups,
Instagram, communities, or edit forums, focused on your specific art
form or interests. Look for communities that
are actively engaged and have supportive and useful
comments and interactions. Right here on Skillshare, we
have an amazing community of artists and art teachers that is just waiting
for you to tap into. If you look in the resources and project section
of any class, you will see examples of
other people's work where other students and teachers are actively encouraged
to feedback on. Every class also has
a discussion tab where you can directly interact with students from
the same class as yours or their teachers. There are also art
specific platforms online, websites like
Bhans, Deviant art, or art station where you can
create a profile and upload your work and receive friendly and constructive
feedback and criticism. When it comes to
things happening in your local town or city, there's an abundance of opportunities for joining
an art community. You could have a
look at art classes, such as ones run by your
local city college or independent artists
running classes right out of their
own home studios. This provides a really
great opportunity to meet with other local artists
and learn something new. You can use platforms
like meetup.com to join other artists
in experiences such as live sketching sessions or nature walks for inspiration
or even studio visits. You can attend local art fairs, exhibitions, and gallery visits. These are really
great opportunities to network with
other professionals, and you may even get an opportunity to
collaborate with somebody. You could also take a look at
professional associations. Many art forms have
guilds and societies that you can join just by being
an artist in that medium. Take a look at what's
available in your area. You might find that there
are local arts councils or guilds that you can join that will give you access to events, exhibition opportunities, or even community
projects in your area. Whether it's online or
in person or through a professional association,
find your community. Surround yourself
with positive people that are going to
provide you with constructive criticism
and support and encouragement and build you up to be the person
that you deserve to be. Our last lesson before jumping
into our class project is looking at further techniques for developing a
positive mindset.
9. Cultivating a Positive Mindset: A lot of what we've already
covered should already be helping you to cultivate
a more positive mindset. But I wanted to share
some further tips and tricks with you that have
helped me personally. We've already covered
setting realistic, smaller goals and celebrating those small wins and the
effort that goes into them. We've also taken a look at
overcoming and identifying our negative self talk by
reframing those thoughts. But what I want to talk about
now is self compassion. Self compassion is about treating yourself the way
that you would treat others. A lot of the times we find, particularly if we're not
in a great place mentally, is that we're
actually a lot more unkind to ourselves
compared to other people. If a friend came to
us and said they were struggling with
their art and that they felt they were a
fraud and they weren't doing well and they didn't
deserve to be an artist, it's highly unlikely that
we would sit there and go, Yeah, I agree, you
should give up. But then why do we say
that to ourselves? Why don't we treat
ourselves with the same love and compassion
that we would a friend? When I'm having a hard day, my go to phrase for self compassion is, I
am so proud of you. I don't know where
this phrase came from, I don't know what it was that triggered me to start using it. But one day I started telling myself when I was really
struggling with the day, I just started taking some deep breaths and saying,
I am so proud of you. It works. It really
makes me feel better. I'm regrounding myself, I'm
finding myself in the moment. I'm reminding myself that
what I'm doing and what I'm accomplishing is
worth being proud of. I tell myself, I'm
so proud of you. Lastly, I want to talk about being surrounded
by positivity. Positivity can come from
anywhere and everywhere, whether it's your journal or other journaling practices
such as gratitude journaling. It can come from your
Newfound community that we discussed
in the last lesson. It can be through
self compassion. The important thing is
that you are surrounding yourself with positivity
every single day. Another way that we can do that is by cultivating and creating a workspace that makes us feel good about ourselves and makes
us want to create in it. My work space is incredibly
important to me. I have this large white desk, which I love to work on. I have these nanoleaf triangles, which I can set to
bright for focus time or more cosy lighting
depending on my mood. I have examples of my favorite
work of mine on the wall and an art to day calendar for daily inspiration
from other artists. My shelves contain
personal items and things that make me happy and just bring me joy
every single day. Overall, this is a happy
space for me to be in. I feel positive when I'm in it, and it makes me want to be in
here all the time creating. This brings us nicely
to our css project. We're going to be creating
an illustrated mantra to go on the wall
of our workspace, something that we have created that is unique and
personal to us, and reminds us how
great we are and really adds positivity
to our environment. But first up, we need
to choose our mantra.
10. Choosing Your Mantra: Over the next couple of videos, we're going to be
crafting a mantra for us to put up
in our workspaces. The purpose of this
is to have something visible that reminds you
just how fantastic you are. First, we want to think
about the kinds of messages that we want to be putting up in our
creative spaces. Ideally, the mantra
needs to be positive, short and sweet, and something
that is personal to you. This doesn't mean that
it has to be something completely unique and
never before written, but it needs to
really resonate with where you are on your
creative journey. One option is to
look back on our reframing our negative
thoughts exercise. Take a flip back
through your notes and your journal and
see if there are any reframed negative thoughts
that really speak to you. This is a great place
to start in creating a mantra that's going to mean something to you personally. Another option is to look
at quotes and affirmations. If you're struggling with the reframing negative thoughts
exercise, don't worry. I totally get that. It's a very personal and quite difficult
exercise to get into. If you've never done
anything along the lines of CBT or thought
journaling before, it's actually quite a difficult thing to get
in the mindset of. So don't beat yourself up. Instead, you can take a look at quotes and affirmations
that have been written all across the decades and see if there's
anything else that resonates with where you are
on your creative journey. There are so many
great quotes and affirmations out there and
you can find tons online. I've actually included
a list of some of my favorites as a downloadable
resource in this class. Take some time now to
pick out a mantra, a reframed negative thought, a quote or an affirmation
that really speaks to you. In the next lesson, we're going to look at how we can illustrate this into something that we can display in our creative spaces.
11. Illustrating Your Mantra: Now that we've got
our mantra selected, we're going to be looking
at illustrating it. To be clear, this doesn't mean that you have to
be an illustrator. We're not necessarily creating a beautiful work
of art with this. The idea is to pour
your energy into this piece so that it really
means something to you. All you really feel that
you're up to doing is writing your mantra
onto a posted note, maybe doodling some stars
around it, then go for it. The point is to make this yours. First, we're going to be
talking about format. I've created these mantras
on a whole range of different media from small A
six note cards or postcards, all the way up to meter
square paintings. In 2022, I was involved in quite a serious accident where luckily I was left
physically unharmed, but as a result, I developed
some quite severe PTSD. As a part of my therapy, we looked at mantras
and affirmations and positive thoughts and
negative self talk and everything that we have
discussed in the class today. And there was one phrase
in particular that was incredibly helpful to me and actually helped me on
my road to recovery, which was the phrase, I am safe. This mantra became
incredibly important to me. I would repeat it to myself
when leaving the house, because I was incredibly scared. I would repeat to
myself in the house because that was where
this accident occurred, and I would have
to remind myself daily that wherever I was, whatever I was
doing, I was safe. So as a result of that, I ended up creating this painting. It took several days, and I can say that I poured my absolute
heart and soul into it. Everything that I chose from the style of the
lettering to the colors, the brush strokes,
the use of ink, everything was incredibly
personal to me. And because this message
was so important to me, creating it became a
part of the therapy. It became a part of what
helped me recover, I believe. I then had this
painting hanging up in my office wall for months
after I finished it, and it became a
really huge part of my recovery journey and rebuilding my own confidence
following that accident. I want you to take the
exact same approach when you're creating
your personal mantra. I want you to think about
the colors you're using, the lettering, the style, the medium, even
any embellishments you want to add to your piece, anything at all
to make it yours. Don't try and make this perfectly
beautiful piece of art. Just think about making
it unique to you.
12. Your Finished Mantra: The very last step in your class project is to place your new
illustrated mantra, pride of place somewhere
in your creative space. You could fix it
to your monitor, put it up somewhere on the wall where you could see every day. You could even
snap a photo of it and make it the lock
screen for your phone. That's a great way to view
this mantra every single day, even if you're not always
in your creative space. Every time you look
at it, I want you to think about what those
words mean to you. I want you to think
about the effort that you put into creating this. I want you to think about the negative thoughts that
this is directly battling, and I want you to remind yourself as to how
amazing you are, what brilliant,
creative you are, and how far you've
come on your journey. I personally would love to
see your finished mantras. So if you could take a moment to snap a pick of your
mantra and post it in the class project gallery below, I would love to see that. And I'm sure loads
of other students would take great joy
in seeing it as well.
13. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for
taking this class. I have had so much fun putting
this together for you, and it's really been
important to me to create a class about imposter syndrome and about building
confidence because, as well as it happening to me, I'm so aware that it
affects so many creatives. I really hope you got as much
out of this class as I did. If you did enjoy this class, please take a moment
to submit a review. I love seeing feedback
from my students, and I would love to
hear which aspect of this class spoke
to you the most. So, if you want to be among
the first to hear about when I'm launching a new class
or running a giveaway, be sure to follow my profile
right here on Skillshare. Thanks again for
completing this class. I cannot wait to see all of your amazing and
inspirational mantras in the class project gallery.
Hattie Linton, Digital Artist and Ink Illustrator
