CONFIDENCE COACHING
When people talk about me, they often say things like “I wish I could be as confident as you are.” And what I usually say is… “well, you can! I wasn’t born this confident, I work hard every day to be this way!”
Needless to say, they don’t believe me.
While being your biggest critic is a great way to improve, you will soon find that only looking at the negative sides of your work will turn the process of creating into a nightmare geared towards production only. A joyless struggle where nothing is ever good enough.
You have to become your biggest proponent. The greatest fan of your own work, be it writing, drawing, acting or playing. After all, if you can’t believe in yourself, why are others going to believe in you? If you can’t find joy in your art… why are you doing it in the first place?
“Confidence coaching” is therefore the term I use to refer to the exercises and career advice that have helped me keep my head high and ignore the naysayers throughout my very, VERY peculiar career. You can read more about it in detail just below, or skip to the bottom for an appointment!
Learning from experience
I started working on comics professionally back in 2012, at the young age of 17. I had bills to pay before I had finished high school, and having never had the drive to attend college, I set off to become a freelancer.
In just two years of tireless work, I was working for DC comics and Blizzard… and yet, I felt empty.
Depression dragged me into a bleak pit of despair, where if I wasn’t working, I felt like I wasn’t worth anything.
Therapy back then helped me develop a much healthier relationship with my job and my intrinsic value, but I found out that none of my therapists quite understood what it was like to be an artist struggling with self-doubt and figuring out how to survive the demands of any artistic industry.
Still a workaholic, I continued to overwork myself to the point I completely wrecked my wrist by the age of 21. I had to forfeit my stellar career despite being so young, and so, for the first time, I was forced to do two things:
Reevaluate my relationship with my artistic production.
Make a place for myself in a new career in an industry I’d never set foot on.
And so, I became a solo game dev. And a voice director. And an art director. And a writer. And a translator. And all the things that let me pay the bills while never overworking myself or feeling like I’m stuck in a routine!
These 10 years of experience of jumping between wildly different jobs and managing to build entire contact networks anew, always leaving a lasting impression, puts me in a unique position to help newcomers, both voice actors and artists, learn the tools to confidently take up the space their deserve among their peers, all the while guiding them to avoid falling into the same pitfalls I fell in my youth.
Booking An Appointment
These hour-long sessions, priced at 60USD, will be tailored to your specific issues and questions, but in general, we’ll discuss your career, your feelings towards your work, and reconnect with the dream that first made you want to be part of this field.
I believe firmly that dreams are merely goals that don’t yet have a clearly defined set of steps to be achieved, and finding that spark again will make all the difference for the confidence you’ll feel facing the artistic journey ahead of you.
I’m always happy to have 1 on 1 talks with newcomers who need a hand figuring out where they want to be, as well as professionals who are already well ahead in their journey but don’t quite feel satisfied with where they find themselves in spite of all their achievements.
I’m currently setting up a calendar to make this process automatic, but for the time being, if you’re interested feel free to email me at thehayseedknight(at)gmail(dot)com or DM me on Twitter.