Define Yourself, Before Someone Else Does that For You

WRITTEN and ILLUSTRATED by PETER MOORE

AT THE END OF A POST LAST WEEK, I ASKED: What gold nuggets are buried in the rubble of your lifetime, waiting to be unearthed through your creative processes? 

In my own creative quest, I learned something important along the way: When you become bold enough to say to yourself: “I am X,” where X equals that producer of stuff you love, because it comes from deep within you. So, fill in that blank yourself: I am an artist, I am an entrepreneur, I am a chef, I am a standup comedian, I am a writer.

If you say it with enough confidence, backed by enough personal striving and experience, people will believe you. But the important bit isn’t what other people believe about you, but rather, what you come to believe about yourself. 

That’s what scratching the itch is about. 

I recently wrote an article for BACKPACKER called The Best .2-Ounce Addition to Your Hiking Kit.

It is of course a pencil, for memorializing your trail adventures on a blank page. In it I proposed the three rules I …