Hello, it's Antriese and welcome to another episode of the Savvy Painter podcast. I am so happy to have you here listening to this episode. This is going to be a good one. So last week we talked about how to make art when it kind of feels like the world is burning down.

And this week, I got some questions.

We're going to talk about how to make art when you don't feel like an artist.

I'm hearing from artists who walk into their studio, sit down in front of the canvas,

or pick up their sketchbookbook and suddenly they're thinking,

who am I kidding? Does that sound familiar? Or maybe you look around at other artists and you feel

like they have something that you don't. Maybe it's more confidence, more skill, more legitimacy.

Maybe you're wondering if you should even be calling yourself an artist at all. And if that is you,

first, welcome, because here's

the truth. Every artist I know, yes, even the ones you admire have felt this way at some point.

Call it imposter syndrome, call it just self-doubt, whatever it is, it's not about your skill level. It's not even about your

experience. It's about how you think about yourself in relation to the world around you. And right

now, I get it. I know the world is a scary place. There's a lot of stress. There's a lot of uncertainty and it feels very, very chaotic.

Every time I wake up and open anything to look at the news, I'm always very apprehensive, like what

happened while I was sleeping. When everything feels unstable, our brains look for certainty.

And one of the easiest, most harmful stories that we tell herself is, maybe I just don't belong here.

But I want you to ask yourself, what if that story that we like to tell ourselves, what if that story isn't true? What if the only thing

standing between you and feeling like an artist is just the thought? So today we're going to

break apart that thought. We're going to be talking about the myth of the real artist and why

waiting to feel like one is kind of a waste of time, how imposter

syndrome often means that you could be in the wrong room, not the wrong career. We're also going to

talk about why external stress fuels self-doubt and how to take back control of your thinking. And most

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