There is a danger with being an artist selling online that I didn’t know about when I started four years ago: sellers sometimes use an invisible measuring stick to compare what we do to what everyone else is doing. Do you do that? I did, back when I first started.

For me, it started innocently enough. It was a quick look at people who had hearted me on Etsy. It was a glance at other jewelry shops to learn how to photograph earrings because I just didn’t know. It was volunteering for constructive critiques on the forums and on teams. It was little things I’d do to compare myself to others.

Then, practically overnight, quick peeks quickly turned into constant, obsessive looking. Every day, I had a rhythm of searching out shops, and every day, I’d turn away from my computer feeling like crap. How could I possibly create anything good when there were so many beautiful pieces of jewelry already?

It was not a good place to be. It felt barren and desolate, and that was the first time I truly struggled with inspiration and creativity; up to then, I was never not inspired, and I took that for granted. Suddenly, the flow just wouldn’t come, and after only a few months, I was hung up on all the things I couldn’t do. I started questioning my decision of running my own business. I was making desperate choices, I had stopped blogging, I had pulled back on networking in favor of marketing and self-promotion, and none of it was working.

I was stuck there for quite a while, driving myself crazy by constantly comparing myself to others, until a friend, another jewelry designer and a mentor to me, very bluntly told me to stop.

You are enough.

Your work is enough.

What you want to create is enough.

It wasn’t comfortable to hear that, only because I had stopped believing it. The lack of sales I had seemed to validate that no, I wasn’t enough.

But she had been selling for a lot longer than me, so I took her advice and slowly stopped stalking other shops. I slowly stopped trying to compare my work to others, or my shop sales to other shops, and just focus on me. That wasn’t so comfortable, either, because for a while there, I could only see my work through the comparison filter I developed.

But just as slowly, I turned the focus and energy I was sending out inwards. And I realized that I was asking the wrong questions. It wasn’t about what everyone else was doing right versus what I was doing wrong. It was about figuring out what I wanted to create, and what style felt like me.

And once I got back to that question, once I kept the focus turned in, the muse came back. My energy levels rose, my excitement for selling returned. I was excited to create again.

And I started to believe again that what I was doing was enough.

But what about now? After my decision to close my jewelry shop a couple weeks ago, I waited for the second-guessing to occur and the panic to set in… but it never did. Three years after my story above, I still find myself struggling to remember that I am enough sometimes, so I absolutely expected to feel doubt with my choice. But I don’t feel doubt; I feel peace.

Seeing something I made with my own two hands still reminds me that I am enough. Knowing that my work is being loved and worn reminds me that I am enough. Whatever comes next, I know that I will be enough.

The ladies at Just Be Enough are talking about images and symbols this week that reminds them that they are enough. What about you? Do you have an image or symbol that reminds you that you are enough?

To read more stories, please visit this Just Be Enough post. If you have a story of your own, you can link up there!