07/06/2023
BELEIVE IN YOURSELF.
You may as well believe in yourself because it’s simple and doesn’t cost you anything. And it goddam works, goddam it!
When I was ONLY just starting off as a photographer I told a friend that I was now a professional.
He didn’t like it because I’d literally only been taking photographs for a couple of months.
Maybe he had a point. I didn’t even have a camera 6 weeks prior to announcing myself as a pro.
I was NEVER an amateur, I went straight in as a pro. I decided it was for me and I had what it takes.
He said, you can’t be a pro after such a short time of taking photos. But I believed I could be.
Nobody had the outside authority to tell me I couldn’t advertise myself as a professional, so as far as I was concerned I was a pro.
My friend still wasn’t having it!
But after another 2 months I started getting published in magazines and being offered decent money to shoot for people.
And a year after that I was beginning to fly around the world shooting for men’s grooming brands.
Around this time I remember someone asking if they could come and assistant me. They told me they had been to university studying photography and had ALSO been assisting several other photographers for 2 years since leaving university. That means they’d been shooting for over 5 years!!! And still resting in the shadows as an assistant 😞
It made me sad because I’d been involved in photography for only 6 months and someone who had been doing it for 5 years wanted to assist me!
They still hadn’t given themselves permission to be a professional.
Permission to step up and step out. Have the light shine on them. Be seen, and have your work put on display.
It was wasting years of their life. They remained committed to the path but was delaying their own success due to lack of belief.
And yes it’s scary, and yes you can get it wrong and fail, but nobody is going to give you permission or champion you apart from you.
You gotta do that s**t yourself. You gotta believe in yourself. You gotta. Just try it. Go tell someone what you do. Even if it’s at the edge of your grasp.
And there’s a good chance that once you’ve told someone and gotten it out of your thoughts, your reality will start to mold around that statement.
Belief is a powerful, powerful thing. Go do what it takes to get yourself in the mindset of belief and then tell at least one person what’s about to start happening in your life. But tell them like it’s already happened. BELIEVE.
www.timcollins.nl
