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FREE ARTICLES
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Are Your Continuing Education
Efforts
Holding You Back?
Continually updating your skills
and increasing your knowledge is a great idea.
But, are your continuing education efforts
holding you back?
Creative folks love to take
classes and improve their creative skills, learn
new techniques, and tap further into their
creative talents, which is fantastic.
Unfortunately, if you are really taking these
classes in an attempt to fill "the hole of
doubt" in your head - that little voice telling
you, "You aren't good enough!" - then you aren't
really helping yourself because you're not
fixing the real problem.
Self-doubt is a terrible beast of
an emotion. It will force you to
continually second-, third-, and forth-guess
yourself. Many people try to mask this
overwhelming emotion by referring to themselves
as "perfectionists" or "over achievers" when in
reality they are totally ruled by that
self-doubting voice.
Even worse, creative folks tend
to fall victim to the terror of self-doubt more
often than not. Right-brain thinkers find
themselves in continuous fear that they don't
know enough, that their technique isn't
perfected enough, or that their clients will see
them as "frauds" who aren't worthy of charging
for their work.
Even creative types who are
confident in their skills and talent have
difficulty charging their clients appropriately
for their work, worried that no one will pay
what they really think they should charge.
The few who do find the guts to set appropriate
fees cave quickly the second a client questions
that fee, and drop prices to keep the client
happy.
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Are you charging what you are
worth? |
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Do you drop your fees the
moment a client hesitates on your price?
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Do you joke with other
creative folks in your industry about the
"10 cent project" you just finished?
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Do you spend tons of hours
working on projects for very little pay?
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Are you exhausted by your
business with nothing to show for it?
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By no means am I suggesting you
stop taking classes and improving your creative
skills. What I am asking is this: Are
you taking classes to improve your skills or are
you taking them in an attempt to quiet the
self-doubting voice in your head? Is
taking that class solving the real issue?
If you do second-guess yourself,
have trouble setting fees, cave when a client
pushes back on your prices, or spend enormous
amounts of time on projects for little money,
then self-doubt, not lack of talent, is most
likely the problem.
So, invest in a program, class,
group, or item that will help you impact the
effects self-doubt are having on you and your
income. Get out of your own way and learn
to control that self-doubting beast talking in
your head. Learn skills that will help
your business, so you are free to charge what
you want and enjoy your creative talents.
The impact this will have will span years and
will impact your income over and over and over.
Now, wouldn't that be great?
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