Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Beau Raines. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Beau, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.
It seems to me that imposter syndrome is simply the condition of taking on responsibility that extends outside of your comfort zone. In very much the same way growth is achieved. This is my first thought in considering imposter syndrome so my immediate response to feeling like I am somewhere I do not belong is as if I am in a classroom.
I remember the first day being moved into the older kids’ math class in high school and feeling so uncomfortable and like I did not belong. By the end of the year I found myself leading the whole class through the study material preparing us for the final exam. Ever since, I will always seek out the same outcomes from noticing imposter syndrome within myself.
Proceed knowing that the solution to these feelings of discomfort are not to be combated with knowledge and experience. Imposter syndrome is my north star for growth and becoming a more capable and advantageous individual. When I begin to feel too much like I am “where I belong,” I cannot help but to start looking outward for something new, something different, something uncomfortable so that I can figure it out; Learn to feel comfortable in the new environment and add the experience to the many extensions of myself where my existence can be expressed and realized in a productive and creative way.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
VoiceOneArts is an umbrella for all of my creative endeavors. It covers personal projects and artistic experiments to finalized formal corporate gigs. I lean on this brand to provide me structure and guidance as I continually broaden my experiences outside of my “professional” niche of photography while still maintaining a direction with my time and effort that supports the primary skills and professions I would otherwise get distracted from. What I have found interesting at this time in my career is the more I expand and create with forms not within my professional niche directly, the value I am later able to provide through my professional services as an artist greatly improves. I’m finding that the more I have branched out and invested into painting or graphic design, or dabbling in video, returning to photography is a refreshing and exciting kind of work that immediately benefits from these other experiences and perspectives. I used to be afraid of having to choose a specialty amongst so many interests and after as many years I have spent building this career path, I have found that the specialty of being a photographer has only become more self-evident and established because of my continual involvement in these outside endeavors. VoiceOneArts is the encapsulation of my journey as a creative and an artist opposed to being the title of a photography business.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The three rules for daily living I do my best to uphold for myself are:
1. Every new experience will only improve all other experiences. Don’t turn down an opportunity to do something, because anything you do, when done earnestly, will make you better at all other things you do. The Secret life of Walter Mitty is a brilliant translation of this!
2. It takes years to discover your style. Practice. The more routinely or consistently you return to utilizing skills, the deeper you ingrain that knowledge into your impulsive behaviors allowing you to implore more of your mind to learn new skills and more dynamic perspectives towards the skill-set you wish to improve. My biggest obstacle early on was juggling so many different skills within environments that did not cross over with any of the other environments I was learning new skills in. This made it incredibly difficult to retain the new knowledge of one skill as I was consistently pulled away with at least one other unrelated skill.
If I could go back, I still would do it all the same, however, understanding this now has given me the patience that the expectations of professionalism I have in mind do require this prolonged sense of time where ultimately all of the various skills that were once opposing one another to pick up will eventually come together and be a matter of what defines you a creative individual who is putting something out into the world. And I have felt how this stands true in a corporate life just as it does in the domain of “artists.”
3. Just because you are not doing better, does not mean you are not doing your best. I am most appreciative of my ability to be so hard on myself, to always truly believe what I create always has so much room for improvement. I’m always seeing ahead, always looking for the next thing to try or the next problem to solve. Like all emotions, these states of mind also come and go. This perspective also tends to follow with the sensations of defeat, the mirrored acknowledgement of everything never being all it can be would have to also mean you will never succeed.
These two ideas caused years of detrimental trouble for my motivation and my routines. The most effective remedy for this within myself, was through mentorship. The many mentors I have followed through their routines of being a “professional” in my mind exposed those, whom I modeled after, would continuously deal with the exact same obstacle and yet, their work was so inspiring and astounding to me. I changed my framework of what it means to find success. I saw how the ones I considered successful types were simply successful because of their ability to leave an impact on me like the one I had. Therefore my success need not be the achievement of a project finding a state of absolute completeness, but rather the effectiveness of what I create to be impactful in the ways that I feel are good.
4. The truest mistake you can make is to be too afraid to make mistakes.
If you are truly capable of taking responsibility for any and all of your actions, then you will also become the individual who can risk making a mistake, knowing full well that you are willing to own up to the consequences. Most of not taking a chance is just the fear of not knowing how you will respond if things do not go as you expect. Once you learn for yourself, that you are prepared to face that unknown, with the faith in yourself that you will never run away from responsibility, you can find out that almost all of the risks that have the potential to lead you into a better future were never even risky to begin with. A lot of doors will open up if you’re simply willing enough to at least try. At the end of the day, the best we can ever truly do, is try.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
With most of the personal obstacles out of the way, and much of my skill set really beginning to establish itself with some legitimacy and confidence, I am finding a great amount of resistance from workload. At any point in my career where I have felt the most successful, I was also in a position where the best solution would have been to hire a team that can take responsibility for many of the elements of working in an artistic niche that do not require your personal touch, ie. editing or original designs.
It appears that there are two avenues one meets where you either incorporate and develop a standard to be adopted by others, or you remain independent and are left in the position of raising the level of income without the capacity for raising the threshold of how much you can produce in a given amount of time. I’m not sure yet where this viewpoint will guide me, but financial responsibility and allocation of finances that promotes a structure for expanding the threshold of these limitations is likely the most fundamental solution to sort out in order to have any continual growth with the business side of being a creative.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.voiceonearts.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/voiceonearts
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/voiceonearts
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/voiceonearts/
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/voiceonearts
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/voiceonearts
Image Credits
Vi @strangerkiddo Allison @saidthepeopleband Khairi @its.khairi CF @cleverfools
