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Honest thoughts about self-confidence

marsh on April 12, 2017

Hey Young game dev student here. This is my first article and English is not my main language, but I'll do my best. I recently joined t...
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Damien Cosset

Yeah, imposter syndrome is no joke. I don't think it ever goes away. That little voice in your head telling you that you are worthless will always be there ( I can still hear it ). But, how you deal with it is the most important thing. It's easy to compare your chapter 1 or 2 to another person's chapter 20, but it's not useful.

I read this thing once: When is a flower perfect? Each state in a flower development, from seed to full blossom is a necessary one. When is a flower perfect? It's always perfect. You are right where you need to be. But there will always be someone who needs to hear what you have to say.

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marsh

That's what I'm learning now, to keep up despite of what my head thinks.
And I have to say, that what really made the difference for me is interacting with people, outside in the real world.

I've always been that kind of person that likes to hang out but somehow stays most of the time home.

And now that I'm forcing myself to go out and do cool stuff outside, I'm starting to feel more confident about myself and my work. I guess that's a thing.

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Darrell Washington

I have to save that flower analogy that's pure gold right there. And you are absolutely right!

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Kim Arnett 

You're not alone! And I encourage you to write about what you've learned anyway. We're all beginners here one way or another... and not everyone's a game developer :) YOU have a unique experience we could all learn from.

The more you write, the easier it becomes.

As for imposter syndrome, it's extraordinarily real. Let me introduce you to Maureen Zappala, a previous NASA Engineer that struggled with imposter syndrome so much.. she's writing a book on it and does motivational speaking on the topic. Here's some of her blog posts:

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marsh

Knowing that someone like a NASA Engineer struggles with this kind of problem, makes me feel.. less smalll, somehow.

Thanks, I will totally give it a read :)

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RevanProdigalKnight

I really don't have any right to say this because I haven't written any articles yet, but I'd say even if you write something and think to yourself "Well people will already know (most of) this already, so what's the point?", go ahead and publish it anyways. There will always be somebody who doesn't know about whatever you're writing about, and those who do know about it may learn something they didn't know, or they can offer suggestions and improvements. It can be a learning experience for everybody.

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marsh

Yeah, the hard part is that writing a good article takes time, and the more time I spend doing something the more you start losing the focus and perspective. But now I'm learning to be less obsessive about these things and don't fear to stop writing/working on something for a while so I can keep my head cool...

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James Hood

I really enjoyed this post, and you're definitely not alone. Keep writing! I always love this anecdote from Neil Gaiman:

neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/160603...

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Ben Halpern

In some ways Imposter Syndrome seems like a bit of a misnomer. Why would we call the thing that basically everyone goes through all the time a "syndrome". It's just the way things are. If anything I'm skeptical of people who don't seem to feel this way.

I thought by now I would have "overcome" these feelings, but nope. Logically I have come to realize people care about my thoughts, if only because of a humorous twist, but I still expect nobody to care and that I'll be literally figured out as a fraud every day.

So that is to say... yeah I get it.

And if you write a post about memory management, I would read the shit out of that. It's a topic that I don't really handle well and I love to see stuff like that come into my feed. I am sure many feel the same way.

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marsh

These are really nice words, specialy coming from the creator of this website.
Thankss :)

I like to think now that this voice is the one that keeps me on the right path, the one that keeps me out of my comfort zone. I don't know if everyone feels this ways to some extend.

Wish I had more time to write about it, or even read about it.
But if I find some, I'll try to share some more thoughts on whatever I feel like writing about :)

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Ben Halpern

Yeah no pressure, but if you do have time, there will be some people that find it valuable.

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Alexey Voinov

I must say, that getting satisfaction in what you're doing and being self-confident are completely different things. Different sets of skills are involved. You need to exercise both. :)

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xiaohuoni

do that and enjoy it