Petra Stefankova's Writing Blog - On art, design and society by illustrator – visual artist – art director – writer – entrepreneur

News for July 2010

Self-belief evolution

My latest press involvement in Prague raised a topic around young ladies and their dealing with stress, building confidence, self-picture and belief. I am glad that I had the opportunity to share my experience through a mass media channel. I really went through all kinds of these things. In the past when I had to experience life changing situations it took me something like two years to get used to the new position and challenges and feel good enough and easy in it. I had to test my skills and my potential to fully believe that I am capable of doing things. Even though teachers used to tell me that I would never be an artist and despite some people sending me e-mail messages advising me to fuck off from the creative industry and do something else. My first public speech made me frozen and shaky. Although I was perfectly prepared as if doing an exam for life.

With time, everything got much easier. From introverting artistic position I got slowly to loving public speeches and socializing, meeting new people and talking a lot. I have done a lot of presentations for companies, universities or conferences. Although I still have stuff to learn, I don’t feel like talking on every topic of this planet when I don’t feel the need to and there are situations when I am still stressed, the more I do these things, the less tension I have, more relaxed and confident I am. Most recently I met this extraordinary woman during Women’s Social Leadership Awards in London, her name is Dr. Rachel Armstrong, who became my great example for showing the inner personality power to the world. Amazing public speaker with passion sending her message all across the room. She inspired me a lot so I tried to apply similar energy when I was giving advice to aspiring illustrators at Futurising in London. And it worked perfectly! Passion and confidence inside me was transferred to people I was talking to. They got excited themselves and I believe they took me for an example in similar way I took Rachel. The event appeared very successful to me after such experience. It was quite a journey.

So, let’s believe in ourselves more, it gives us energy and passion to create great things which we are made for.