How much is genuine confidence, as opposed to overblown bravado, tied into your ability to be real, to be authentic with the people who want to know more about you and your art?

We humans have amazing internal radar that picks up bs automatically. It’s a survival instinct, where knowing what’s real and what’s not has always been crucial.

We also have some equally amazing internal barricades that can rewrite our first, instinctual responses and kick us upstairs into the more civilized Brain Override Lounge.

Sometimes this is a good idea, when our instinctual response is actually triggered by an old pattern that no longer makes any sense. Other times it’s a form of personal delusion, when facing something authentically is going to ask more of us than we feel up to.

Either way, the people around us will…

I know the default myth is that artists and the written word are mortal enemies.

Of course I’ve taken every opportunity to shake artists free of this ignorant, if persistent, idea, beginning with my book Writing The Artist Statement: Revealing the True Spirit of Your Work.

Since we humans owe our ever-evolving humanity and consciousness to our ability to communicate, and since words are the core vehicle to this communication, perpetuating any level of poverty with the written word is to tie you up with a lie.

AND, I don’t dismiss the resistance a lot of artists feel toward writing. It’s very real. I just don’t buy that…

For an artist to be able to climb what often feels like a very steep career mountain, confidence is your essential ingredient.

And by that I mean bone-real confidence; not the pumped-up kind, where we’re skating over a surface of insecurity and fear, and so we’re pumping ourselves up to keep from falling over a cliff.

I’m talking about the kind of confidence that’s based on what decades of academic research have shown: that it is not compliments—it is not people telling you how good your art is—it is your level of competence that is the bedrock  of your confidence.

Here are 5 cool ways to increase your art-career competence, which will automatically increase your confidence. (And if I’ve left any out, go right ahead and add it in the comments!)