A confidence crisis is not confined to an artist. However, anyone who practices any kind of art will at some point or another face some sort of wobble in their confidence at some point during their creative life. Probably several actually, and if they are anything like me then they will have them on a regular basis. They will doubt their technical knowledge. They will wonder if their creative pool has dried up and they might even want to sell all their kit convinced their last ever piece of create work has long since been produced.
Recently whilst standing before a class of eager and expectant faces I wondered what it is that gives us confidence. What gives me the confidence to go before people and teach despite the fact that I still have so much to learn? What gives me the confidence to write these words that may will be shunned with hefty giggles and dismissive vocabulary? How do we take confidence into our hearts and lives.
For me confidence simply comes from non attachment to the outcome. When I first stood on my mat before my very first yoga class I had to overcome a moment of anxiety. Could I teach? Would they like me? Would they come back? I reminded myself that every person there that day would have a different opinion of me. Some would like me and some would not. Some would eagerly return for the next class and some would go on a search for another teacher who resonated more with them. I let go of the outcome. I reminded myself that it did not matter what each of their individual opinions were and that it was more important to teach in a way that resonated fully with me.
I believe our education system has to take a great deal of the blame for the collective confidence of the human race. Imagine, if you will, the young child who stands before her parents and siblings in full confidence singing out a tuneless nursery rhyme. She has no attachment to the outcome and is glorious in her unadulterated joy. Fast forward a few years and put her in front of her class where she now has to recite a poem or speak on some inane subject she has no interest in. Now she is told very clearly there will be a rating attached to her performance. She simply has to be attached to the outcome. She is taught to be attached to the outcome. Each and every day, in everything she does she is learning attachment to the outcome. In the words of Buddha ‘the root of suffering is attachment’. She spends twelve years in education being taught to be attached to the outcome of everything she does. She is doomed until she has spent an enormous amount of time working on herself and unlearning this very thing.
There are seven billion of us on this madly spinning planet. Each and every one of us has a different perception and reality. If you are creating something every single person that views that work will have a different reality of it and if you attach yourself to the outcome of each of those realities you will end up at the very root of suffering. Create what resonates with you. Detach yourself from the outcome. Write the words that sit pretty on the page before you. Take the photograph that is breathtaking in your eyes alone. Paint on that canvas in the way that feels exquisitely beautiful to you. Run the way that you want to run. Move the way you want to move. Sing the way you want to sing. Detaching your self from the outcome allows you to do and say things that you otherwise might be reluctant to do or say. It frees you from your comfort zone and somewhere out of your comfort zone is where all the good stuff lies.
Try it for a day. Detach yourself from the outcome of every single thing in your day and see how it feels. Learning to detach yourself from the outcome is an incredibly liberating thing. It frees you up to be your true self in all your magnificent glory. It gives you incredible confidence. It brings you back to yourself and in that place is all the joy and happiness you could ever want.
nikivanvelden 