By Christina Greve

Rules of Condence

An encouraging no-nonsense guide for photographers and creative souls.

Let go of who you think youre supposed to be, overcome the comparison trap, and embrace a new condent + creative you.

free guide

Imagine
Imagine waking up in the morning, feeling condent and energized, with a mind full of creative ideas. You have those happy butteries in your stomach because you just cant wait to get started. You have no fear of failing, only condence that whatever you do today, it will be a wonderful experienceperhaps youll create an outstanding image for your portfolio or youll learn from experimenting.

Imagine if you let go of harsh self critique, the bad habit of comparing yourself with others and the fear of failing: your world will change dramatically because of it.

I personally guarantee that if you lack self condence you can change this and turn yourself into a rock solid, powerful, condent younot arrogant or ignorant just someone who loves herrself and is proud to be herself: 100% true to your hearts desires.

There are so many steps you can take to build your condence, and in this guide Ill share the 7 key strategies to develop the mindset that helped me as well as many of my clients.

This guide is 100% FREE! It is my gift to you. If you like it, feel free to share it with friends and family.

State of Mind

Self-condence is a state of mind

Self condence is our own attitude towards ourselves, our belief in what we are capable of. It is our perceived certainty that we have what it takes. We express it in our body-language, in what we say, in how we say it and how we handle any given situation.

Condence is also connected to our self-esteem, which is our self-image and determines how much we value ourselves. Improving self-condence usually improvesour self-image as well, and to succeed as an artist and photographer we need to develop both.

Every moment of every day, you decide who you are and what to believe! You get a second chance every second!

Confidence
Why do you need condence?

As an artist and photographer, condence is needed to involve your emotions and your self into your art and your images.

Its important to believe in yourself enough to:

$ enjoy the sometimes lonesome journey of artistic creation handle times when inspiration is lacking navigate any technical difculties ignore your insecurities about the quality of your own work sufciently and fairly price your work and your time stop comparing yourself to others share your images on a website, Flickr, Facebook or other social medium show your work to potential clients, buyers, friends and art galleries receive and grow from any comment or criticism you may receive sell yourself to make a living out of your craft + passion

Believing in yourself is simply the fastest way to succeed as an artist.

Lets look at how you can start building your self condence right now.

The 7 Rules of Condence 1. You are not your past. 2. Know what drains your self condence. 3. Stop comparing yourself to others. 4. Challenge Yourself. 5. Dont give a sh*t what others think. 6. Screw perfection, be playful. 7. Get off your (cute) butt and take action.

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.

- Maria Robinson

Rule no.1
You are not your past

Dont build your self image on past negative experiences. Build it on your dreams for the future! - Christina Greve

Regardless of how you view yourself, regardless of your past experiences, regardless of your personal storyyou can start to grow your self condence today!

If you lack condence, chances are that you spend too much time looking back at your past and looking for both proof and evidence that you are a person who lacks condence. Your mind turns into a movie player that plays your bad memories over and over againand the messages is clear; we all have those stories from our past where we failed, looked stupid, did something that made us look foolish, got rejected, picked on, forgottenand maybe someone even laughed at something we were proud of!

The more you keep returning to those memories, the more condence you will lack. Therefore, its absolutely crucial that you make a decision right here, right now: not to live in the past anymore. The past is gone and the past does not in any way determine how your future looks. YOU decide right at this moment how you want be.

Know that you are not your past, and every second, every day, you can make a new decision about who you want to be and how you want to live. Its as simple as that. Your past is a part of you: you learned some valuable lessons, but your past does not dene who you are.

Rule no.2

Know what drains your self condence

Lets compare your self condence with a battery. Sometimes our self condence battery is fully charged and provides lots of energy and great ideas. When its fully charged, things are great. You can smile at challenges. You can laugh at yourself and be easily present in the moment. You can care for others and still have enough energy left for yourself. You feel more brave, make goals and take big steps towards your dreams.

But then, sometimes the battery only runs on a half-charge or gets burned out completely. I bet you remember times when you felt your creativity was low or gone? During these times you probably felt completely unsuccessful as an artist and a photographer.

Its important to understand that even the most condent woman can, if shes not careful, nd herself in a state of feeling unworthy and lacking condence. Condence is not a constant state, but a state of mind that you consciously need to work on, on a daily basis.

Many things can drain your self-condence battery: stress, lack of sleep, negative thinking, impossible schedules, life challenges, difcult decisions, procrastination, too many chores, too much unhealthy food and lack of exercise...to name a few. To feel condent you need to take care of yourself and be mindful of what drains your condence.

Of course, some of what I mention above is okay once in a while and in small doses. But the longer you are in danger of draining your inner battery - youll eat up your condence in the end. So be aware of the foundation.

You develop real

self-condence
as an artist by knowing yourself, following your heart and being

100% true to your inner self.

Follow your gut instinct as one of your

highest values
and never compromise on it

Rule no.3
Stop comparing yourself to others

If you took the strength of others, and compared them to your weaknesses, how do you think youd size up? And do you think this would make you feel good? The funny thing is, this is what most of us do at one time or anotherand some of us do pretty often. Its a sure-re recipe for a drop in self-condence and for unhappiness. Its also not useful for the development of your creativity.

When you compare yourself with another photographer or artist it can kill your creativity, your energy and bring down your self esteemnot always of course but sometimes. Perhaps you know the feeling? I certainly do.

If you are like me and most creative people in the world, you more than likely admire a few people, and maybe even see them as better or more qualied than you, or as competition (if theyre at the same level as you).

Comparing yourself to them does not encourage you (or me) to stretch our imagination and nd alternate sources of inspiration. Of course its great if they inspire you and make you glow with passion and ideas, but if you feel terrible and "not good enough" then dont look at their work! Go out and play and have fun instead, testing your own ideas to feel alive and creative.

Courage
Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. - Steve Jobs

If you compare strength to strength, there will always be those who are better, and those who are worse. Even if you do well in comparison with others, you may be articially inated from this comparison. Its a short-lived ego boost if you win the comparison. Youll be easily knocked down.

When our "inner critic voice wants to sabotage our passion and creativity by comparing itself to another, it distracts us from our ow, our value and unique contribution. Thoughts like: I suck they are so much better. I am a total failure. Look at where they areI should be there, doing this or doing that and I am not good enoughI am a loser.. etc.. are like water on your inner passion and re, it simply kills creativity!

Photographers, especially women, struggle with comparison. So let's cut to the chase and put it as simply as possible. Comparison kills the little positive seeds of inspiration growing inside of you! Dont use comparison to bring yourself downyou are too unique! In fact, there is no one on earth like you, so comparison is not worth spending time on anyway!

What really matters is that you dare to aim for the stars (go for all your crazy ideas and dreams) and aim from your heart (be sure to create and photograph what you truly LOVE) nothing else matters! Focus on being you and bringing YOU into your pictures. If you look to much at others work, you will bring to much of their vision into your own work.

Dont let fear stop you.

If you drop all your doubts, fears and worries for a few hours, you will be absolutely astounded at what you accomplish.

Do what you fear, and the fear will disappear.

Success comes to those who string together the small accomplishments, one after another, after another despite and because of their fear!

Rule no.4
Challenge YourselfFeel the fear and do it anyway

To be really proud of yourself and develop self-condence you need to challenge yourself from time to time. That means to get out of the comfort-zone.

The comfort-zone is a good thing because we feel safe there and its healthy for us to feel safe, but its not in the comfort zone we grow the most and its not in the comfort zone we develop condence. To do that you need to step outside and put your pretty feet on uncertain ground, so to speak.

It can be scary to follow your dreams because to do so, you often need to leave the safe zone and do things that make you doubt yourself, that make your heart pump faster, that make your hands sweaty.

But staying inside the comfort zone is the big enemy of any accomplishmentand tends to have a negative impact on our condence.

To fully LIVE and become condent the key is to feel the fear and then DO it anyway. Successful people are often successful because of this. Despite their fear they keep taking steps to reach their goals. They consciously move forward every day, little by little.

Fully Live

Doing something that you know is good for you, even though you feel fear, will grow your condence fast. And the good thing is that the more you do what scares you, the more it starts feeling easy and comforting.

Challenging yourself to higher standards. Dont live by standards of other people, you are the only one that knows what is good enough for you. Above anything else, you need to be true to yourself.

Take the risks involved to get to the next level by trusting that if you give all you can that only good will result. Again, if you are really proud of yourself then you know you are on the right track.

Rule no.5
Dont give a sh*t what others think

The thought of what other people think about you can hold you back in life and erase your condence. This might be the fastest way to lose faith in yourself If you care too much about their opinions.

Sometimes we dont take action because of fear of being judged by someone or people in general. Strangely enough we fear being judged by people we dont know very well or even want to know. How odd is that? When we have a connection with people and like them, we fear their judgement much less.

Another funny thing is, those other people whose opinions you care so much about? They dont have time to focus on you, because they are so busy caring about what others might think of themperhaps even what YOU think of them!

The number one fear in humans is to be rejected, not being acceptedand that is the reason why this takes up space in our minds. We are afraid to be left out and left alone. This fear drives us to please others even when we hurt ourselves.

Be Proud

As photographers and artists we fear that no one will like our art, that someone will think we lack talent or skills. We fear rejection and therefore tend to sit around waiting for someone to discover us, waiting for someone to see our talent and come dragging us out of our hiding place. But the fact is 99% of time it just t doesnt happen that way!

Thats why you need to say f**k it and proudly show off your skills and craft as the creative human being you are.

Rejection and judgement will come your way, but for every one time you are rejected, you will be accepted ten times or more. Focus on those who cheer you on and support you. Forget the rest!

Life is too short to live in the shadow of others judgementand remember they feel the need to judge only because they themselves lack condence.

Condent people rarely feel a need to judge others, they are too busy living their life.

Rule no.6
Screw perfection, be playful

Twenty years from nowyou will be more disappointed by the things that you didnt do than by the ones you diddo. Sothrow off the bowlines. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

Never wait for your perfect creative mood to strikejust get to it and create it. Body movement has a strong impact on the mind, therefore if you feel uninspired, dont sit and wait for magic to happen.

Do something active. Some of my best ideas come when Im in the gym or while running. The more you move the more your creative juices will ow, the stronger and more condent youll feel.

The trick is not to aim for perfection, but to aim for creating. In other words; the nal result should not be your main focus - in stead focus on having fun while making your art. Be playful, experiment, test new techniques and more. .

Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great. - Mark Twain

Be Playful

The more you focus on the creative process and the joy of playing with ideas, the better your end result will be. If you start out aiming for perfection, chances are that youll be too hard on yourself, too negative and way too judgmental over your own skills and ideasand then your condence disappears in a heartbeat.

Allow yourself to be a little crazy, to do silly stuff, you dont have to explain yourself to anyone. After all its your art, your style and your camera.

As you manage to let go of putting pressure on yourself to create perfect images, creating wonderful images actually starts to get much easier. Its kind of funny really. :-)

The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do. - Steve Jobs

Quote

When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world.

Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.

Thats a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is - everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you.

And you can change it, you can inuence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

The minute that you understand that you can poke life - everything change!

- Steve Jobs

Rule no.7
Get off your (cute) butt and take action

Eighty percent of success is showing up. - Woody Allen

Condence training is a lot like doing exercise: if you dont exercise, you dot get t; the more you work out the better shape youll nd yourself in. Its exactly the same with your condence. You are the one who decides if youll be condent and you are the one who decides how condent youll feel.

The best way to train your condence is by doing the right thingfor yourself. This means looking out for yourself by being your own best friend, allowing yourself to reach for your dreams with integrity and setting healthy goals to improve your life.

A sense of accomplishment will obviously make you feel more condent. So quit putting off those new creative ventures, whatever they may be.

The best way to move towards your dreams and grow your condence is to focus at one goal at a time. Then do something every day to move yourself closer to this goal. Just do one thing everydaythats all it takes.

Take a Step

For every action step you take, your condence will rise. And when you nally reach your goal, your self condence and self esteem will blossom like never before.

Its fantastic, right?- Not only will you reach your goals, but youll feel condent, too! Seems simple enough, right? So get out there and show them all what you are made of and evolve into a newly condent you! You have nothing to lose and nowhere to go but up.

You can write absolutely anything on a blank pageanything at all. Every time you wake up, you face a blank page. No matter how much time you think youve wasted or lost in life, it is never too late to make the very most of the moment you have now.

Let go of the past. Life is yours to be lived now. You'll gain nothing by hiding from it. Surround yourself with only the best people. Let go of the rest. Change doesn't happen in the futureit happens right now by taking action in the present.

Your time is now!

The End

About the author

Professional portrait photographer and life coach Christina Greve celebrates, supports and coaches photographers and creative souls to create a career and life that they love.

Through her work behind the lensand during her workshops and coaching sessions Christina has empowered hundreds of women to get behind the camera and create their dream lives. Christina is known for her elegant and dreamy photography style.Her portraits are very much inspired by whimsical fashion, beauty and glamour. As a self-taught photographer with a air for entrepreneurship, Christina has successfully built her business in only a few years. On her popular blog(http://www.divasanddreamsblog.com), she shares helpful tips and free tutorials for career, life and photography inspiration. You can also follow her on her personal blog (http://www.christinagreve.com) Check out her portfolio (http://christinagrevephotography.com/) or connect with her on her Facebook page: Divas and Dreams (https://www.facebook.com/Divasanddreams). Christina lives in Arhus, Denmark with her husband and three children.

Copyright 2012 - Christina Greve