The Morning I Sat Still and Hated It: It All Starts With You
I was sitting on frozen ground at sunrise, waiting for light that might never come.
This wasn't some mindful photography practice. I wasn't being patient and zen. I was just stubborn, cold, and out of options.
The shoot had to happen that day. The client had requested it. I'd driven an hour and a half. The sky was grey, flat, completely useless. Every instinct told me to pack it in, come back when conditions were better, cut my losses.
But I didn't. I sat down on that frozen January field and waited.
Forty minutes later, the clouds shifted. A sliver of light broke through. I had maybe sixty seconds. I got the shot.
Here's what nobody tells you about that moment: it wasn't the light that mattered. It was everything that happened while I was sitting there with nothing to do but think.
The Person Who Carried My Certainty
For a long time, I had someone whose opinion I trusted more than my own.
They weren't a mentor. They weren't even in the industry. But they were my sounding board. The person I'd check in with before making any significant decision. They'd look at my work and tell me what landed. What didn't. Whether something was worth pursuing or better abandoned. Having that external certainty felt essential. Like a safety net. It meant I didn't have to fully trust my own judgment, which honestly felt like a relief.
Then life got complicated for them. The regular check-ins stopped. The feedback disappeared. And I was left sitting there with piles of work and absolutely no idea if any of it was actually good. I spiralled. Started projects and abandoned them halfway through. Took photographs I genuinely loved and then second-guessed them into oblivion. It was uncomfortable. A bit pathetic, if I'm honest.
Because I'd been so focused on building a business that I'd forgotten to build my own judgment. My own creative conviction. My own ability to look at something and think, "Yes. That's exactly what this needs to be." The person who stepped back didn't take my vision with them. They couldn't. But I'd been so busy seeking their approval that I'd never fully owned mine.
The Rejection I Didn’t Tell Anyone About
In my first year running Charlotte Beadle Photography, I applied for a popular rural trade show. The kind where half the county turns up. Exactly the audience I wanted to reach. I spent weeks on that application. Agonising over every word. Building up this whole vision of where my booth would be, how I'd arrange the prints, which images would catch people's attention.
They rejected me. A standard rejection email. The kind that clearly goes out to hundreds of people.
And here's what I did: I didn't tell anyone. Not that I'd been rejected. Not that I'd even applied. I was too embarrassed to admit I'd put myself out there and failed. Since then, I've been rejected by numerous trade shows, project proposals, exhibitions. Sometimes they don't even bother telling me, I just never hear from them again. Rejection happens regularly. But that first one? That's the one that taught me something.
Looking back, the silence was the real problem. I'd been treating external validation like oxygen. One person says no, and suddenly I'm questioning everything. The work. The vision. Whether any of it was worth pursuing. But the work hadn't changed. The vision hadn't changed. The only thing that had changed was someone else's opinion of it. And I'd given that opinion far too much power.
What Sitting Still Actually Teaches You
Back to that frozen field. Sitting on that ground waiting for light wasn't enlightenment. It was me finally being too tired to run from discomfort. Because before that, I was always moving. Always doing something. Taking more shots, trying different angles, adjusting settings. Motion felt like productivity. But sometimes there is no problem to work. Sometimes the only thing to do is wait. And waiting means sitting with uncertainty. With the possibility that you've just wasted your morning. That you've made the wrong call. That maybe you should have packed it in an hour ago like any sensible person would have done.
You know what I discovered? My thoughts are extremely loud when I stop moving. And I'm not comfortable with that. All the doubts I'd been outrunning just sat down right next to me. "You don't know what you're doing. You're wasting your time. Why did you think this would work?"
I couldn't scroll my phone because my fingers were too cold. I couldn't pack up because I'd committed to staying. So I just sat there with all of it. Eventually, the noise quieted down. Not because the doubts were answered. But because I'd simply outlasted them. When that light finally broke through, I wasn't thinking about whether I was good enough or whether this project would lead anywhere. I was just present. Responding to what was actually happening.
That's when I realised: the patience I thought I needed for the work was actually patience with myself. With my own uncertainty. With not knowing if I was making the right call until well after I'd made it.
The Tuesday It Changed
It changed on a Tuesday morning. I'd been staring at a project proposal for twenty minutes, phone in hand, ready to text three different people for their opinion. Then I just... stopped. Put the phone down. Made the decision. Not because I was suddenly confident. But because I realised I'd been sitting there, paralysed, waiting for someone to tell me what I already knew I wanted to do. The only thing their approval would have changed was making me feel less responsible if it went wrong. I started making decisions anyway. Small ones at first. This image goes in the portfolio. That project gets pursued even though I can't explain why it matters yet. This client isn't the right fit, even though the money would be helpful.
I stopped waiting for someone to tell me I was right. Not because I was suddenly certain I was right. But because I realised no one else could make those calls anyway. They weren't in my head. They couldn't see what I was trying to build because half the time, I couldn't even articulate it properly. The vision was too early, too half-formed, too strange to explain to someone who wasn't living it. So I just started trusting it anyway.
What Actually Happened
Sometimes I was wrong. Sometimes spectacularly wrong.
I'd commit to a project that went nowhere. Book a shoot that didn't work out. Spend hours on something nobody wanted. But the failures didn't flatten me as much anymore. Because I'd made the decision. I'd owned it. And when it didn't work, I could look at it clearly and think, "Right. That didn't work. What do I do differently next time?" Instead of spiralling into "I knew I should have asked someone first. I knew I couldn't trust myself."
The difference is subtle but massive. One keeps you trapped in self-doubt. The other lets you learn and move forward.
The Uncomfortable Bit
Here's what no one tells you about running a creative business: community matters, support matters, but they can't force you to pick up the camera when you don't feel like it. They can't decide which projects to take on. They can't sit with your self-doubt at three in the morning when you're convinced you should probably just get a normal job with a pension.
That bit? That's just you.
You are the only person who can build your vision. Not because you're special. Not because you're uniquely talented. But because it's yours. It exists in your head in a way it can't exist in anyone else's. Other people can support you. Encourage you. Buy your work and tell their friends about you. But they cannot do it for you. That shoot at quarter to four? You have to get in the car. That difficult client conversation? You have to have it. That creative risk that might not pay off? You have to take it.
What I Am Not Going To Tell You
I'm not going to tell you that you should believe in yourself. That you're capable of anything if you just try hard enough. That everything will work out if you follow your passion. That's rubbish. Comforting, but rubbish nonetheless. Here's what I will tell you: you don't need certainty. You don't need unwavering confidence. You don't even need to particularly believe in every decision you make. You just need to make the next decision. Take the next action. Show up tomorrow even though today was difficult.
The conviction comes later. After you've proven to yourself, through your own actions, that you can do this. Not perfectly. Not without doubt. But consistently enough that it starts to look like a business instead of a hobby you're pretending might work. Every decision you make builds that evidence. Every time you choose yourself, even when it's uncomfortable, you're proving you can trust your own judgment.
Not because you're always right. But because you're willing to be wrong and keep going anyway.
What I am Trying To Say
Self-doubt doesn't go away. I still feel it. Often. But I've learned that self-doubt isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. It's just part of doing it at all. The people who look confident? Who seem to have it all figured out? They're doubting themselves too. They've just decided to move forward anyway.
So stop waiting. Stop seeking approval. Stop outsourcing the decisions only you can make. Pick up the camera. Book the shoot. Make the call. Sit on the frozen ground and wait. Do it badly if you have to. Do it scared. Do it while questioning every choice. Just make the move. Because your business, your vision, your version of this creative life. It only exists if you build it. And you're the only person who can.
Listen to Episode Two: It All Starts With you →
The full story, told properly. Including the parts that don't make me look good.
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