Cult of Borrowed Confidence

There is a strange comfort in copying. It feels safe. Reassuring. If everyone else is doing it, it must be right… mustn’t it?

That thinking is precisely how originality dies quietly in a corner.

Creative people often spend more time asking how others market than actually creating. They watch what works for someone else, mirror it faithfully, then wonder why it does not work for them. The answer is simple and uncomfortable: you are not them. Your work is not theirs. Your voice, audience, pace, and purpose are different.

Following the herd does not make you visible. It makes you blend in.

When you ask everyone how they market, you are not really asking for strategy. You are asking for reassurance. You are borrowing confidence instead of building your own. I always call it ‘The cult of borrowed confidence’.

Marketing advice travels badly. What worked for one artist may have depended on timing, personality, platform quirks, or sheer luck. When copied, it becomes a pale echo. You end up performing someone else’s success story rather than writing your own.

The irony is that audiences respond to conviction, not imitation. They sense when something is done because it feels right, versus when it is done because everyone else said so..

Blending in is cosy. It offers camouflage from judgement. If something fails, at least you failed the same way everyone else did.

But art, writing, and meaningful work have never belonged to the comfortable.

Every distinctive voice sounds wrong at first. Too quiet. Too blunt. Too odd. Too slow. Too much.

That discomfort is not a warning sign. It is proof you are doing something of your own.

There is a particular habit that reveals insecurity instantly: tagging successful artists, famous names, or unrelated creators into your own work so you can siphon attention from their search traffic.

It is not clever. It is not strategic. It is transparent.

All it does is announce that you do not trust your own name to stand on its own.

Worse, it dilutes your voice. When you lean on someone else’s reputation to be seen, you quietly admit you do not believe your work deserves to be found without a crutch. That is not marketing. That is noise.

People who do this rarely realise the deeper problem: they are not being discovered, they are being ignored. Algorithms may skim over it. Humans certainly do.

It places you firmly in the bleating crowd… baaaa baaaa… calling out alongside everyone else, hoping volume will replace identity.

It never does.

There is an obsession with speed in creative spaces. Post more. Sell faster. Scale now. Optimise everything.

Some people thrive on that rhythm. Others suffocate under it.

There is no universal tempo for creativity. Some of us move in steady steps. Some pause often. Some disappear for a while and return with something solid.

Dancing to your own time is not laziness. It is alignment.

The most honest work is made when performance drops away.

When you stop imagining the algorithm, the critics, the peers, the invisible jury. When you stop asking whether this will please, convert, trend, or impress.

That is when your real voice shows up.

Not everyone will like it. That is the point.

I do not follow formulas well. I do not market the way I am told I should. I write, build, share, and work in ways that make sense to me. Sometimes that means slower growth. Sometimes it means fewer nods of approval.

It also means I recognise my own work when I see it.

Originality is not loud rebellion. It is quiet refusal.

Refusal to rush. Refusal to mimic. Refusal to pretend.

Stop asking how everyone else does it.

Do it like you.

And dance as if nobody is watching… because the right people will notice anyway. The dancing to my own beat