How To Build Your Creative Confidence

“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.” — Albert Einstein
I was watching a TED Talk a colleague shared with me.  It’s David Kelley on how to build your creative confidence.  It’s a little video with a lot of insight.
David Kelly is on a mission.  After a run-in with cancer, he found his calling.  The thing he most wants to do in life is — help as many people as possible, regain their creative confidence they lost along their way.
While watching the video, it validated a theme in my life and that I’ve seen in others.  When we find confidence in one area of our life, it spills over into others.  For me it was weight-lifting.  Early in my life, I gained confidence through lifting weights.  I was able to see incremental progress and experience periodic breakthroughs.  It taught me that if I put in the effort, I got results.  This confidence spread to other areas of my life.   The same is true for failure.  It’s easy to let failure leak into other areas of life or define us, if we let it.  In fact, Martin Seligman says learned helplessness is when we make our setbacks permanent, personal, or pervasive.  We learn to stop trying.
The video also reminded me of another key concept for life.  You get what you focus on.  You can focus on your setbacks and let them limit you.  You can “opt out” in life and decide not to try.  Whether it’s a fear of failure, or a fear of judgment, it’s easy to shut down.  Some people have let a single set back early in life, shut them down.  You can focus on your strengths or weaknesses … Choose strengths.  You can focus on your failures or your wins … Choose wins, but learn from your failures.

Source:http://sourcesofinsight.com