Building Confidence In The Face Of Doubt | Ali Schorman | Episode 993

Ali Schorman | Episode 993

Ali Schorman specializes in making ornately decorated, functional slipcast wares. She works part-time as a glaze tech at the Mesa Arts Center. Aki received a BFA with a concentration in drawing from Arizona State University in 2002. Ali lives with her husband and two boys in Chandler, Arizona.

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Do you think that having confidence whether it’s in your work or in yourself is just a matter of having a good mindset?

I think that certainly has a lot to do with it. Yes. I have always tried to be a positive person so I feel like that reflects my work when I am positive. Yeah!

Everybody can’t be positive all the time so I am sure there are times…do you ever have a lack of confidence?

Yes.

Do you have any hacks for getting past the self doubt and lack of confidence?

Well, I just try to have faith in my ability and I try to work from intuition so I try not to doubt myself too much. I try to go with first thought, best thought on some things, my intuition. That is something that I find to be really helpful.

If there any time when it’s important to stop and believe the inner critic and adjust and do things differently?

I try not to listen too much to my inner critic because in the past it’s been kind of a paralyzing force for me. I am a pretty intuitive person and I try to trust that what I am doing is the right thing. And if it’s not then it’s not.

Do you ever get the fear that my work won’t sell?

Oh certainly. Yes. I mean I think everybody feel that, right? That’s a very real thing. Fortunately it does sell so (laughter).

But you don’t know until after it actually happens.

You never know what’s going to happen. And even though I have done the show before you don’t know if you have already saturated your market. You don’t know what’s out there. But lucky people still want my stuff and they come back from last year and people come from Instagram. It’s really neat.

Someone once said, Action is the soil for confidence to grow in. I’m curious, are you a person that tends to take the action and your confidence follows?

Yes. I am definitely a busy body. So like I mentioned before about self-doubt and how it was a paralyzing force for me, so conversely when I told myself to just keep on making, keep on moving forward, just keep on doing whatever it is. Do something. That’s when the confidence started coming, when I just faced it head on and really started making just whatever and seeing what stuck.