How to Be More Confident As a Creative & Show Up Before You Feel Ready

There’s this dream version of you in your head.

The one who posts consistently, shares their work with ease, walks into rooms with a clear vision and soft power. You imagine they wake up one day and just feel ready — like a light switched on. ✨

That version of you doesn’t arrive after you become confident. They arrive because you start showing up before you’re ready.

Let’s explore what it really looks like to learn how to be more confident as an artist — especially when the world tells you to be louder, bolder, more polished. When in reality, your magic lives in the quiet.

The Myth of the “Ready” Moment

There’s no cosmic bell that rings to say “okay, now it’s time!”

There’s no signpost, no certification of worthiness. The “ready” feeling is often just ✨nervousness rebranded✨ and if you wait for it to vanish, you’ll be waiting on your artistic dreams forever!

You don’t become confident and then start.

You start, messily and gently, and confidence builds like calluses on your hands — slowly, lovingly, through the doing. And hey, who says we can’t do that together?

Why Being an Artist Doesn’t Mean Being Loud or Braggy

Your People Find You Through Your Frequency, Not Your Volume

You don’t need to be the loudest person in the room to be unforgettable. Think of how your mom would say something 100 times… and then your best friend said the same thing once and it finally clicked. 😂 The point is, being you is being original.

For a visual artist, maybe you love muted palettes and soft textures — while others are using neons and dramatic contrast, your tone-on-tone compositions evoke calm and intimacy.

For a performer, your sheer personality is what makes you different. The way you chuckle, get excited, and physicalize things. Even if you want to take on different characters eventually, casting directors always want to see you.

For a designer, your strength could be in negative space and intentional typography, creating serenity in a world of visual clutter. Who says you have to do anything other than brands like that?

Your voice, your frequency, your way of loving art is how people find you.

Creation Doesn’t Always Require a Performance

Sometimes the most sacred parts of your practice are the ones no one sees. Yes, meaning it’s okay for you to be working on things in the background without people seeing it.

I get it, I get it — friends and family expect public proof of progress, making us creatives feel like we have to post every single creation to prove we’re not falling behind.

So what’s the solution? Start small.

Document for yourself before for the feed.

Instead of filming every moment, first of all, just don’t until you’re ready. Full stop. You don’t owe anyone ANYTHING. If you went from creating to not creating, then that’s all you need right now!

If you want to start posting but are overthinking, then just take a photo or a short little vid before or after your session and plan to not even post it! Do that over and over again until you’re like “hm, this doesn’t hurt to post, and BTW, I don’t need to follow a schedule now. I’m allowed to post and ghost. So nobody has to get on me to do this because one-and-done for right now is a-okay according to Kira.”

Small steps. That’s how to be more confident: by tending to the inner artist before the outer audience.

The More Settled You Are in Yourself, the Less You’ll Judge Yourself (and the More People Will Resonate With You)

When you feel safe to be seen, others feel safe with you, too.

That’s how to be more confident: not by performing perfection, but by making peace with your presence.

So how do you release this grip of incessant self-judgment? Because as artists, we’re going to be rough on ourselves, because we care SO MUCH about our work. So much so that we’ll make ourself go crazy because of how much we love it.

So how do we work through this?

• Notice your jealousy of other artists when it comes up. It’s okay to feel it. I FEEL IT SO MUCH I’M ALMOST EMBARASSED TO SAY IT. Then do what I call the “why” x6 — literally ask yourself why you feel this way, and then ask why you feel that, and why you feel that, and so on. You might find a desire you haven’t yet given yourself permission to claim.
• Remember that if you’re judging someone, you’re open the door to being judged to. The harder we are on other people the harder we will be on ourselves. What would happen if you dared yourself to… let them live? Let them be? And then feel what that’s like to let it go? It’s not easy, especially if you were surrounded by judgmental people in your past. But I promise you, letting go of this control will set you free.

How to Build Self-Trust as an Artist

Start With What You Do Know

Even the seemingly random (and even painful dare I say) parts of our life offers… something.

I was a gymnast once. Didn’t think it related to my art until I realized that being tough — even if it was a level of tough I think was extreme — was really helpful when I started a YouTube channel and started this blog!

Maybe you were a server and had to learn how to read a room. Now you know how to sense the emotional energy of another person or an audience and it makes you a really good performer.

Maybe you were the oldest sibling and became a master of holding space for your younger ones whenever they had boy problems and your collaborations with other artists always just hits perfectly.

Maybe your heartbreak made you better at writing love songs — raw, unfiltered, and human (shoutout TayTay Swift!)

Your whole life is usable. Your art didn’t start on a blank canvas and you’ll never feel that pressure again, either!

See Your Own Patterns

What you repeat naturally becomes your brand.

Your themes, your metaphors, your motifs — they already exist.

You don’t have to invent a niche or find it or pick it or whatever people say.

You are the niche.

If you always bring mythic themes into your art, if you can’t stop drawing moons and staircases and open windows — that’s your thread and lean in on that! That’s you. That’s the beginnings of the depth of your niche. And guess what? You literally don’t need to define it if you don’t want to.

Just be curious about what you naturally repeat. That curiosity will show you how to be more confident in your creative identity.

Let Action Be Your Teacher

You can study foreverrrrrr. And hey, I’m always saying how much I love learning and being a forever student of the universe!

School taught us to wait. Wait to be called on. Wait to be right. Wait to be graded.

But art doesn’t wait. It responds. It ripples. It teaches through the act of doing.

Every brushstroke, every post, every attempt is a lesson. Not a performance to be graded but an experiment to be felt. This is the classroom now: your camera, your canvas, your screen.

In school, you learned the theory, then went home to do the homework alone. But in creative work, the doing is the learning. You get to experiment and ask questions in real-time. You get to co-create with your curiosity. That’s how to be more confident — by letting experience teach you in motion. Screw what school said — your art is your playground and rules now.

Celebrate Tiny Wins

In the branding program I joined to build my content and branding studio, I love that we have weekly accountability messages where we’ll celebrate the big and the small wins.

Closing a client! Going to the park! Getting a massage on a Tuesday! Taking a walk instead of doing busy work!

I always think that for artists, too, this is gold.

Maybe you reorganized your supplies. Maybe you simply rested. These aren’t filler days. These are foundation days.

Your art is a practice. And in practice, showing up counts more than shining perfectly.

Light a candle for the draft you finished.

Brag to your friend about the sketch you actually love.

Celebrate that you said “no” to the project that didn’t feel aligned!

That’s how to be more confident — not by waiting for milestones, but by noticing the magic of all the tiny wins happening to bring you to the next one.

An Artist Bestie Will Help You Show Up Before You’re Ready <3

When you’re surrounded by people who don’t get it — who think your dreams are silly or your work is a hobby — it’s hard to trust yourself.

But when you’re in a creative ecosystem that celebrates softness, slowness, and your sacred timing? That’s when you finally feel permission to rise.

You were never meant to do this alone.

You don’t have to shout.

You don’t have to fake readiness.

You just have to take the next soft step — and trust that your people will meet you there. That, dear one, is how to be more confident. And you’ve got me to help you if you ever feel lost, on video or in your inbox.