😁 Fuck You Energy

We all have the “Not good enough” disease.

We’re insecure.

This manifests itself in two ways:

We have the insecure underachiever. And the insecure high achiever.

The difference?

Confidence. 

The most successful people I have worked with are often, secretly, the most insecure.

But they have creative confidence.

For example, most famous artists are insecure. 

"The more successful I get, the more insecurities I'm getting, it's weird.” — Adele

“When you’re living for the approval of strangers, and that’s is where you derive all of your joy and fulfilment one bad thing can cause everything to crumble.” — Taylor Swift 

“Sometimes I don't feel as if I'm a person at all. I'm just a collection of other people's ideas.” — David Bowie

I haven’t worked with anyone as famous as Adele or Bowie.

But this is my observation of 30 years working with top-tier creative and entrepreneurial people.

Me?

I have been both.

Creative confidence is more nurture than nature.

Creative confidence can be created.

I have been an insecure underachiever and an insecure high achiever. 

➡️ The insecure underachiever avoids making decisions and gets stuck spinning their wheels.

➡️ The insecure high achiever makes decisions, tests creative experiments and embraces the unknown.

I believe all multipotentialite can become insecure high-achievers.

I have witnessed countless insecure underachievers become high achievers by rebuilding their creative confidence and going towards their fears.

This is the system I used to build confidence for myself and my clients. 👇

Social Conditioning

There’s shame attached to “not being good enough.”

We have to remove the shame and realise it’s not our fault.

• We were brought up in a neurotypical society that did not understand us. 

• We didn’t fit in, we wore masks.

• We were rejected by teachers, parents, and peer groups for not living up to neurotypical standards. 

• We are the genius fish who believe we are stupid cos we can’t climb trees. 

• We internalised this rejection as our fault for not being good enough and have taken this into adulthood.

Insecure Underachiever

We have been socially conditioned to believe we’re not good enough.

As a direct result of this, we seek external validation to feel better about ourselves and our creative work.

This manifests in:

• Debilitating perfectionism: if we can’t be perfect then why bother?!

• People pleasers? Yep, don’t rock the boat. 

• We don’t take risks, we don’t share our big ideas. 

• We play it safe. 

• We are super-talented people brimming with creative potential but our fear of rejection means we play it safe and create vanilla work that gets lost in the seas of mediocrity.

Why?

• Because we fear rejection, we fear you will hate us if we outshine you.

• So we dim our lights. We hide in plain sight. 

• Not only do we create within ourselves but we also live within ourselves 

• This becomes our identity.

• And we live small lives. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Reinventing Creative Identity

These are the steps to reinvent your creative identity from insecure underachiever to high achiever.

Step 1) We are not our thoughts. 

The thoughts in our head lie to us. Most of them are based on the socially conditioned ideologies of the neurotypical society.

We’re narrative-creating machines. We run patterns and programmes that dictate our behaviour.

We all live in our own thought-based reality. 

Are the narratives playing in your head true? 

Or are they what you’ve been socially conditioned into believing are true?

Step 2) Creative Authenticity 101 

Stop conforming to societal expectations.

The most common dying regret is “I wish I had lived a life that was true to myself and not what others expected of me.”

Live a life that is true to yourself.

Unsure what that looks like?

Follow your curiosity. It will lead you on the path to authenticity. You can’t fake curiosity. 

You are either curious about something or you’re not. 

Follow it. It’s authentic.

Create work you fucking love. Stop creating work to please audiences and algorithms.

Step 3) Fuck You Energy

This is a critical step for me.

We all have a Rebel Archetype.

You hate being told what to do. 

Prove people wrong. My go-to is a teacher who is probably dead.

Aged 15, she told me I was a loser, and I would never amount to anything. Those words are carved into my soul.

I summon them when I need to tap into my Fuck You energy. 

I LOVE proving people wrong.

Petty?

Sure… but I get off on it. 

I love defying the odds and taking Hail Mary shots.

Step 4 ) Overcome your biggest fear

For most of us, our biggest fear is putting ourselves out there. I pushed myself to post 30 videos in 30 days on TikTok.

This has been the most impactful thing I have ever done for my creative confidence. It has literally changed my business and my career.

When you have overcome your biggest fear this uncovers what sports psychologists call trait confidence.

If you can overcome your fear of putting yourself out there you can repeatedly overcome smaller fears.

Do this repeatedly and overcoming fears and challenges becomes your identity.

You will NOT be fearless.

But you will know that you’ve overcome fear before and can do it again.

High-performance psychologists refer to this as self-efficacy. 

People overcomplicate success.

In my experience, it’s simple but not easy.

The simple truth is: 

The top 1% of any creative field repeatedly go towards their fears.

The other 99% avoid them.

Talent is important, but not as important as the creative confidence to take risks and make a difference. 

To get into the top 1% of your creative field or industry

Do the four steps above repeatedly. 

Create momentum. 

Master your creativity.

It may take years if you’re in a highly competitive field.

But if you continue to create work you fucking love and move towards your fears, challenges and insecurities you will break through sooner or later.

Do this and you will be an insecure high achiever in your creative field.

✅ You will not stay in your lane.

✅ You will stop playing it safe

✅ You will take creative risks.

✅ You will disrupt the status quo

✅ You will liberate your true creative self from a lifetime of people-pleasing creative mediocrity. 

✅ And you will become your true creative self

Is it easy?

Is it fuck…

Is it difficult?

It’s much easier in reality than it is in your head.

Michael Meinhart

Creative Hackers