The Fear of What Other People Think - Reframing Fear, Part 4
Réunion de trente-cinq têtes d’expression, Louis-Léopold Boilly, 1825
Caring about what others think is part of our DNA for good reason. In a time when individual survival often depended on communities, concern about how one was perceived by others helped keep bad behavior in check and encouraged the kind of predictable helpful behaviors that contributed to strong community bonds.
But our communities today are nothing like the communities in which humans evolved. Thanks to social media, our communities might span across the globe and include many people with whom we are only tenuously connected.
Despite the seismic change in what our communities look like, we approach them with our same old brains. Even when we don’t really know who our community members — or "audience” in the language of social media — are, we care about what they think. And we often let ill-defined concerns about our place in this amorphous community dictate what we do.
For artists, worrying about what other people think about us and our work can cause us to start creating for others rather than ourselves. It can lead to self-doubt and creative blocks. Social media can amplify these feelings. We are told to develop our “brand” and are cautioned to stay “on-brand” in everything from our website color choices to the artwork that we create.
Our worries about others are often couched in terms of fear — we fear rejection and we fear looking stupid or inadequate. When framed as fear, the antidotes to these feeling are to stop caring about what others think, ignore critics, and stay true to yourself. This advice is well-intentioned but may be difficult to implement — after all, we are wired to care about what others think!
But if we reframe fear, in this context, as vulnerability, we can draw from a broader and perhaps more productive set of responses.
Instead of asking, “How do I overcome my fear about what others think of me or my work?” you can ask:
How can I reduce my sense of vulnerability?
How can I build or strengthen authentic community to increase my resiliency?
How can I move ahead in spite of feeling vulnerable?
These questions invite specific suggestions beyond the generic advice to simply be brave and stop caring about what other people think of you.
What’s the Worst Thing?
The ill defined is harder to fight than the concrete. Bring clarity to your concerns through contemplation or freewriting about the worst thing that could happen if you take action and how likely that actually is. Often, this very act of making a risk real can minimize it.
Are your Instagram followers really going to mock you for posting something experimental or off-brand? And even if they did, would this actually impact your life?
Gaining clarity on the real risks can also help you identify ways to minimize them or at least to anticipate and plan for the aftermath if the worst were to happen.
Reconceptualize Your “Brand” as Fluid, Not Static
Artists today worry a lot about having a defined style or unique voice, and this is often extended to a more general concern for one’s “brand.” I dislike the concept of brand for many reasons, not least of which is that it reduces one’s artistic voice to something static. And static is the antithesis of creativity and artistic expression.
Your artistic style is not a fixed state between rebrands, it is something that is continually evolving. Focusing on maintaining your style once you have “found” it keeps you from from taking chances, trying something new, and expressing and growing your artistic voice.
When I went to the Dali museum in Figueres, Spain, I was gobsmacked by the wide range of artistic styles and media that Dali explored during his lifetime. My preconception of Dali’s “brand” was embodied by his melting clocks, but that represented just one phase in his creative life. Luckily Dali did not seem beholden to anyone else’s perception of what he should be doing.
Take a Social Media Break
Relying on social media “likes” as a metric of the value of you or your art can make you hesitant to post something experimental or in progress. While you may feel pressure to “be brave” by posting anyway, the truth is that you don’t have to share if you don’t want to. Give yourself time to try things out without making your explorations or new work public. Share with an in-real-life supportive friend or two before throwing it into the wider social arena.
I find that I also need periodic social media breaks in order to clear my head of other people’s imagery. When you see a whole bunch of people using spray paint, you start to feel like you should be using spray paint. When everyone is painting lemons it’s easy to think that you should be painting lemons too. These feelings are tangentially related to our concern about what other people think. As part of our desire for acceptance we sometimes begin to conform — often subconsciously — to what other people are doing.
Build and Nurture An Old-Fashioned Community
When I first moved to Barcelona, I spent quite a bit of time trying to “find’ an art community. It wasn’t until I reframed this as “building” community that I actually started making progress
By old-fashioned community I don’t mean a return to small towns and tight cliques. I simply mean a group of people you know beyond the superficial and with whom you can have meaningful, authentic, and supportive exchanges. In this sense, an old-fashioned community can be either virtual or in-real-life. Either way, building an old-fashioned community takes time, energy, repeated interactions, and a spirit of generosity.
Having support and understanding from a group of people who you have intentionally surrounded yourself with can increase your resilience to the perceived threats from the undefined “others.”
And Finally … Practice the Art of Letting Go
Recognize that you don’t and can’t know how other people will perceive you and your work. You can’t necessarily predict or avoid negativity and rejection from others but you can find ways to deal with the emotional fallout through writing, affirmations, and support from good friends.
A note to my readers
If you’ve read to the end of this four-part series on fear and art, thank you!
If you have other thoughts about fear in art, I would enjoy hearing them.
And if you know anyone who might be interested in this discussion around reframing fear in art (even if they are not artists) please consider sharing these posts.
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