Show up!

SHOW UP! I keep hearing myself say it… show up and show your work. And each and every time I need a big breath of air and an even bigger dose of courage to make it happen. It’s not that I’m not proud of my work, because I often am, but I particularly struggle with ‘giving up control’ afterwards. What if people don’t like it? Or worse, what if they DO like it (that’s actually what I have the most trouble with). My great coach Iris Rutte had to laugh out loud when I said that. She did not laugh at me, but rather encouraged me. “Having trouble accepting compliments is a nice problem to have”, she said, “we can work on that”. So that is what we have been doing. I have been working with Iris for a few weeks now and I notice that it brings me a lot. She coaches in the areas of mindset, marketing & sales and the program that I am following with her is tailor-made for me… Sigh. And also very nice, because that’s how we get somewhere.

One of the things I’m working on now is to show myself. I have a tendency to hide or make myself completely invisible. As I wrote earlier this year, I’m a bit done with that now. What also doesn’t help is that I try to put myself in many different jars (with corresponding Instagram accounts). A jar of graphic designer, a jar of surface designer and a jar of artist. It took me a long time to realize that all those jars are not necessary at all and that I can do more than one discipline at a time. In fact, it works better and is more convenient to put everything in one big jar. All the work, after all, is done by me. Despite the difference in activities and whether it is my own work or work on assignment, I often recognize bits of myself in it.

To find a better focus and to show all my passions*, I am going to bring them all together under one account.

*Fun fact: until recently, I didn’t know what my passion was. In fact, I thought that I didn’t have any passion at all… During a coaching session with Iris, I discovered that I have as many passions as I have Instagram accounts. And best of all, I finally recognized them myself 🙂