I currently live in Brooklyn with my three little boys and husband. What can I say, I’m the unofficial -but official - Queen in my house. I love weird combinations of food (more on that later), going out (MOMS CAN DANCE TOO), and seeing the "A-HA" look on a founder's face when they unleash the story that has been buried in them and their business for way too long.
founder, creative director, and brand storyteller
hi, i'm patrice!
When My NY TV Dreams Tanked I Relied on “Belief”
So last week I made a reel and it took me a cool 754 hours to make. The content creator in me is cringing because
- Who has time for that (apparently I do? But NO, I really don’t)
- It doesn’t need to be that way (according to the 10,000 social media reel experts I follow)
- I make professional videos for brands and teach storytelling & video for a living to entrepreneurs so every time a reel takes me a dumb amount of time to make I feel like I’m a fraud (CONFESSION COMING IN HOT TODAY.)
But in making that video about how I got to the bottleneck of NY TV On-Air goals…only to NOT make it to the top, it brought me back to some of my darker professional days. And I was reminded that time and time again, what kept me going and positive was MY OWN BELIEF in myself.
Thanks mom? Grandma and grandpa? 1st grade teacher? DUMB naturally optimistic attitude? Challenging childhood?
I don’t know exactly how that all works but I do know that even when I was “peaking” at the TODAY Show -I even landed my own digital series -there was ALWAYS that voice nagging at me, “This is not IT for you. You are supposed to do more. This is hard because you’re not on the right highway exit!”
And when that start-up “dream job” shattered my entire sense of self-worth in only 90 days (It IS possible!!!) I was on the floor in a fetal position, but my gut told me I would rise again. I just needed to wallow longer than normal.
Belief. Self-belief.
Yes, things are bad, but I always think (KNOW?) they are going to get better. My inner voice tells me that.
Every successful person I know has this. They have a strong sense of self-belief. And this is not to say bad, TRAGIC things haven’t happened. If anything, some of the most successful people around me have also had some of the most soul-crushing tragedies happen in their lives. The people I know who are not that successful (or happy) tend to view the world or their career path as “locked..fixed….nothing to be done…cards I was dealt” mentality.
They don’t have the self-belief.
And you know what is exciting??? Like a muscle, you can build up your self-belief even if it’s non-existent or a bit underutilized.
Here are two tips for building up your own Self-belief muscle:
- I always had a creative side hustle or hobby when I worked in Corporate. Something that brought me joy and even if I had a $hit day, I could come home and get lost in MY project. This was a “for fun” website I started while I was still working at the TODAY show. Most of my creative “side hustles” led to somewhere unexpected and it reinforced my own belief that “I was good at something.”
- Be generous in your knowledge and time. Yes, we are all busy but as someone who was still interning at the age of 29 & felt tremendously self-conscious about that, I LOVED when someone I looked up to would take the time to meet me for a coffee or give me advice or even just respond to an email. I vowed to pay that forward. Today, some of my brand clients are people who were much younger than me or even interns at past jobs. The more people cheering you on and singing your praises helps your self-belief as well.
OK this is getting into novel territory so I will wrap this up! But I have so many more thoughts on this and how important mindset is (and I NEVER paid attention to mindset…hello WOO-TO-THE-WOO) But I was dead wrong.
