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We live in a world that is constantly selling to us that there’s always something outside of ourselves that will make us successful. Instagram says that reels will be the key to gaining traction on their platform so we create them. A “guru” says we need seven streams of income and so we buy the courses. Your favorite influencer says to buy this book and it’ll increase your daily output. A Founder says you need this tool to tighten up your tech stack and it’ll magically improve your automation.
I’ve been building #blkcreatives since 2010 and I’ve been building on the Internet long enough to have not only seen trends and tools and personalities come and go, I’ve been around long enough to try out all of the ways that the Internet will tell you to succeed. And let me tell you, the majority of that shit did not work and for a LONG time I beat myself up about not having a bigger platform, for not doing “more”, for not getting it right the 10th or 20th time. I was super hard on myself until I started therapy in 2019, and it wasn’t until recently that I realized what my biggest mistake:
Not making myself the top priority in my own life was the foundation of my fuck-ups.
If you hate yourself, if you don’t like yourself, if the majority of the thoughts about yourself are floating to the tune of ‘why can’t I get this right’ or ‘damn, I'm a dumbass’ it’ll inform every single experience you have. And that was a HARD way for me to live. The uphill battle as a Creative wasn’t always external (even though external circumstances do make a huge impact on us), much of the resistance was coming from what was going on internally and it came out in multiple ways. The one major thing I had been consistent with was doubting myself. And because I doubted myself, I also didn’t believe in myself in any way and I never made myself a priority because I didn’t believe I deserved to be one.
So it didn’t matter how good things may have seemed on the surface - the social media growth and expansion, the community wins, the press features - nothing was going to really connect until I learned how to make myself a priority instead of giving every piece over to the journey of success. Accomplishments and achievements are great and they can serve as confirmations but by themselves? They aren’t sustainable. Life is too much to live off of wins alone, the true win for me has been learning to be content within myself.
Everything else flows around that and while I’m still fucking up everyday because, human, I can now rest assured that the more I make sure that I am taking care of myself and being taken care of, my discernment has space to grow, which impacts my choices, my approaches, and my decisions and leads to an overall better quality and experience with my life.
As we’re heading into the next era of #blkcreatives, our goal is to help you do the same and provide aid, resources, and genuine concern for the betterment of you, as a Black creator.
Can’t wait to share all that we have in store this month,
Melissa, founder + CEO of #blkcreatives
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