Managing anxiety during your creative career change: from corporate retail to a photography career.

“I guess I just have to resign, then”.

And this was the most terrifying sentence I’ve said in the past many years. Well, aside of the many times I told myself “this time I’m taking this diet serious” or “i’m never gonna drink again”. The difference is that resigning the corporate job that supported you, took you so many places and has taught you so many things after a good 8 years can’t really be undone - unlike the diet.

My career change to photography began with a friend that has a tower (long story, I’ll maybe leave it for another post) and no clue what to do with her life that led to me buying her a book about career for her professional self-discovery and then being convinced by the sales person that i should get one for myself as well.

It was a very cheeky book (also leaving to a different post) that made me realize that although I loved my job (at the time), photography could be a great career option for me too. So then I bought a camera.

I began with my Canon M50 (those who aren’t too familiar this is a very entry level camera) and photographing friends. First I shot the first friend I could think of that would agree to go out in public on sunset drinking cocktails and posing for me. Then it was the engagement photos of this friend with the tower. Then her wedding (the one I was the unofficial second shooter for, you can read about it here). Then, other people started asking about my photography work and when I realized people were actually paying money for my pictures. Insanity, right?!

But however easy this all sound it was really not - it took many ‘extra shifts’ after my full time job dedicated to learning one million things: from how to use the camera, to using Lightroom, basics of color compositions (which is my thing and I highly recommend this video of Joanna Kustra to get started on this), customer workflow, presets purchasing (all from the one and only India Earl), post-shooting workflow which turned out to be much more complex that I would ever think, not to count all the thousands of dollars spent in software, hardware and lenses. But when I realized - I was hooked.

Noticing that people were willing to pay for my work was what gave me the courage to quit corporate retail and remove myself completely out of my comfort zone.

You see, since 2010 when I was 21 and left my parents’ house to move to Australia i have been supporting myself, and the feeling of potentially not being able to as i’m leaving the most safe thing I ever had in my life - my job - is quite terrifying. So you can only imagine that anxiety hit hard.

So when I decided to change to a creative career my biggest anxiety came from the uncertainty of the future and the fear of not being able to support myself. Will I make enough money? Can I survive with what I make? Should I get a side gig on hourly rate? Am I throwing away a solid career for nothing?

The thing with anxiety is that it comes in waves and when it’s down it opens space to creativity and excitement, but when it’s high it makes our brain go full into alert mode and self-deprecation. And I had to take advantage of the low waves to come up with my own strategy to better manage it when the wave peaked.

That made me come up with two main tools that helps me every time anxiety kicks in:

• Focus on the controllable through strategic planning by answering the questions: how much money do I need to be making within the year? How many clients do I need to make this amount of money (or products sold, if that's your thing)? What are the things I need to do, learn, buy and outsource to get all those clients? And once I had it all laid out on a one-year plan it become much easier to control the fear of the unknown.

• Remember that if i’m good enough, I won’t be ignored: One of the best books I’ve ever read is So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport and it literally talks about being good. Ok, actually the book is a lot more than this and I strongly encourage you to read it. But one of the points is that once you know what you want to do you put all your efforts on becoming truly good at that through dedication, practice and study. And eventually you will be a reference for your work and the market won’t be able to ignore you.

Today I’m in a much better place mentally than I was 3 months ago when I had that resignation convo with my boss. But the anxiety keeps kicking in, although in smaller doses, and instead of letting it take charge I just revert to acknowledging it’s there and focusing on achieving those goals and continue to work on my art. I know that this formula will eventually take where I want my creative career to be.

I hope this helps you in your creative career change as much as it helps me. And if it does, let me know on the comments below and continue this conversation offline.

Obrigada,

Mafe.