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💡 The Big Idea: The Suffering is Optional

Last month, I was listening to Gabby Beckford give her talk at Craft + Commerce, and she asked the question:

If you could burn the rulebook, what would you change?

I’ve been brewing on this for the last couple of weeks. And I think I’ve got an answer:

I would remove the suffering from the creative process.

To some, that may sound blasphemous. There are lots of famous books that portray creativity as a form of warfare. Maybe the most famous is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, which says:

For a long time, I’ve lived as though this was true. But listening to Gabby’s talk, I had to ask myself:

What if it isn’t?

In this newsletter, I want to unpack the idea of delusional confidence and how it's critical if you want to do your best creative work.

The Lie I Believed for Years

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been thinking a lot about who I can help and the transformation I can provide. I’m realizing that teaching people how to use Obsidian is cool, but what really lights me up is helping deep thinkers use PKM principles to publish their ideas online and do their best creative work.

The reason? For a long time, I didn’t think I was creative.

It all started when I was in college. I liked to write songs on my guitar, but then I would hear a song on the radio and realize that I’d ripped off a melody line or chord progression from something that already existed.

Other people seem to have this innate ability to pull a fully formed song out of thin air, and I just couldn’t do it. So I actually said, out loud, “I guess I’m just not creative.”

Then I read the book Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, and it gave me hope. Austin described creativity as the collection and synthesis of the dots you collect. He explained that true artists simply connect pre-existing dots in ways that haven’t been done before.

And with the realization that creativity is a simple formula, my limiting belief was destroyed, and I was free to create.

When Gabby mentioned in her talk that “the suffering is optional,” it brought me back to that moment where I couldn’t see myself as creative.

And it made me question what other limiting beliefs may be holding me back.

Creating From a Place of Abundance

I shared not too long ago about my experience at The Growth Intensive where Darrell Vesterfelt & Corey Wilks helped me work through a lot of head trash I’ve been collecting for years.

Corey kind of just tells it how it is, and at one point he told me:

Tough to hear, but 100% true.

As I thought about why I get so focused on the negative, I realized it’s because I’ve believed that creative work requires suffering, and I probably haven’t suffered enough to have earned success.

After that, Darrell walked me through an exercise where I envisioned myself 6 months down the road after the conclusion of my most successful launch ever.

In addition to the warm fuzzies, that exercise gave me the realization that my work is much better coming from a place of abundance.

I realized that the imposter syndrome (and the anxiety that comes with it) is a signal that I can choose how to interpret.

When I tried to avoid those feelings by playing it safe, I was actually prolonging the optional suffering.

But when I recognize that trigger as a sign that I’m on the right path and doing work that really matters, I’m able to create from a place of confidence, and the results are exponentially better.

The takeaway is this: If I want to provide transformation, I need to create from a place of abundance.

Recognizing this completely changes the way I show up, and frees me to do my best creative work.

The exact thing I want to help others do.

Delusional Confidence

Gabby Beckford has a name for this posture: delusional confidence.

I know how that sounds. The first time the phrase surfaced, it felt like something I shouldn’t say out loud — like I was handing myself permission to be arrogant and skip the part where you actually earn the right to feel good about your work.

But that’s just the old rulebook talking.

Delusional confidence isn’t pretending you’re better than you are. It’s deciding your idea is worth sharing before you have any proof that it is. It’s shipping the thing before the anxiety gives you the all-clear.

And let’s be real, the anxiety is never going to give you the all-clear.

For most of my creative life, I had the order backwards. I waited to feel confident, and then I’d make stuff. Case in point: my most recent YouTube video on How I Run My Whole Life Out of Obsidian. I’ve been dragging my feet on this video for years because I didn’t feel qualified to make it.

After recent events, I shipped it anyway. And it just happens to be the most successful video I’ve ever made.

Confidence isn’t a permission slip somebody signs for you at the front office. You act first, and the confidence shows up later — usually right around the time you notice the thing you were terrified of didn’t actually kill you.

The “delusional” part is just the gap between doing the work and feeling like you’ve earned it.

So close the gap. Call it what it is: confidence you decided to feel a little early.

It’s only delusional until it works.

The Bottom Line: You Don’t Have to Earn the Right to Do Your Best Creative Work

For years, I kept score, and the suffering was my scorecard. If I felt anxious, blocked, and convinced I wasn’t good enough, at least I was paying my dues. Someday the payoff would come.

That’s a rigged game. You can suffer forever and never decide you’ve suffered enough.

Gabby asked, “If you could burn the rulebook, what would you change?” Here’s the rule I’m burning: confidence must be earned through misery.

Delusional confidence is how you burn it. Not waiting until you’ve suffered enough to feel like you belong — but deciding you belong and letting the work catch up.

So here’s your permission: you don’t have to earn your way out of the suffering. You can just put down the rulebook.

And when you do, you’ll find what I found. Your best work was never waiting on the other side of the struggle. It was waiting on the other side of the permission.

That’s the transformation I want for you — not less effort, but better work, created from abundance instead of scarcity.

— Mike