Believe In Yourself! Actually, Nah, You Stink

We both grew up with a healthy helping of Disney (Chayce pretty much knows all the words to every Disney song—he listens to them during his workouts…I Can Show You the World and Part of Your World are his favs). In fact, we once went on vacation to Disney World for ten straight days, and yah, it was just us; we have no kids.

So our exposure to the believe in yourself and just follow your heart themes are fairly gratuitous. But when the credits run out and the music stops playing, that warm, fuzzy feeling quickly dissipates when exposed to the harsh elements just outside those movie theater doors. Then, you discover that a post of yours ended up on one of those “Pinterest Fails” lists and that you also just made the front cover of “People of Wal-Mart.” It's about this time that you start second-guessing that whole just-believe-in-yourself business. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all about believing in yourself and going for it when it may not make a lot of sense to those around you—Chayce and I are doing just that. But there’s got to be a balance here, right? To be honest, I was a bit apprehensive about doing any type of design work; I didn’t yet have a design degree, license, certification, or really much design experience to speak of. Sure, in my opinion, I had a decent creative eye and felt like I had designed some cool spaces. But then I would look back at a project and say to myself, Gah, what was I thinking!

There were also those times that I looked back and thought, Hey, not too bad.

I guess the point is, don’t sell out to one extreme or the other, simply believing in yourself versus following the status quo—both have their place. So you “followed your heart” but someone thought your idea stunk. Well, maybe it did. You’re just human, right? Going with your gut and being true to yourself is not, contrary to popular narrative, a foolproof recipe for success. Accept

failure for what it is, one failure; not, you're a failure. Maybe believe a little less in yourself next time and lean more on the wisdom of others, and after that, maybe do the opposite. I’m not exactly sure what you should do, so just hang out here in the middle with me—we’ll find that sweet spot together. Oh, and by the way, we’re still diehard Disney fans, even if their propaganda doesn't always hold up in the real world. Chances are, if you happen to bump into us at the cinema, we’re watching the latest Pixar film (we’re also planning our next Disney vacation...).