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Sophie Benmouyal's avatar

I woke up this morning with this other question I use when I over-complicate things. I decided to call it the "what's the point on doing this, anyway?" therapy. When you work on an illustration (but it can apply to anything in life), wrote down what we are really asking from you. Working on a children's book? The objective is to deliver in you style 15 spreads that support a story (define the story). Period. When you have self-doubt during a project, return to your main objective. Are you filling this main objective? Yes. So, everything is fine.

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Adam Ming's avatar

It’s really so hard for artist to operate in this way, and so it makes their work harder. It doesn’t need to be so hard. We’ll said!

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Sophie Benmouyal's avatar

I usually use this question before sending proof sketches or final to a client. At this moment where I can't let go and still looking at how I can improve the illustration. When perfectionism becomes a trap!

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Sophie Benmouyal's avatar

When I was a kid, my mom was calming my anxiety crisis (I was a really anxious child and was always overthinking everything) with this question: what's the worst that can happen? The usual answer was: not much. I still ask me this question when I'm unsure about something.

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Adam Ming's avatar

It’s a good question and a good thing to think about, I had a friend who asked that about his career, his answer was, worse case, he’d move back and live on a farm, once that was sorted he moved forward ambitiously in a foreign city

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Sophie Benmouyal's avatar

That is exactly what my mother tried to make me realize at the time. The worst is never that worst and there is always so many options and a lot of in between that can happened. This way of thinking has helping me to move forward all my life in every field of my life, like your friend. It is also good to remember that you can always walk away or start again.

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