Fear of rejection, of criticism, of failure, most of deal with many types of fear as creatives. Fear can be healthy, but it can also be paralyzing. This great video addresses a lot of where it comes from and what we can do to get past it.

In this video, Ted Forbes from The Art of Photography talks a lot about fear in the creative process and why that particular brand of it is so hard to get a handle on. I think he touches on something really important: whereas many fears are easily understood — flying, spiders, etc. — fear, like many things in the creative process, is a bit more nebulous. Any photographer, musician, painter, etc. who has spent any time in the professional world (or simply on the Internet) knows that you need to have very thick skin in this world; it’s the great irony that we’re often pouring our essence as individuals into our work only to have it backhandedly dismissed by someone for reasons that really have nothing to do with us or our output. Nonetheless, even with that thick skin, there’s still an underlying feeling of unrest (at least for me). As Forbes puts it, it’s important to embrace the “weird” traits that make us creative in the first place and to separate how we perceive ourselves from how others do. How do you deal with fear?