A few years ago, I was hanging out with my mom
and she asked me, "So Mijito, what do you do?"
It took me by surprise, it was a bit strange that my mom,
after all these years didn't know what the hell I
do for a living.
Did she just not take an interest in my things?
Do you even know that I exist, mom?
Do you not like me?
Are you not proud of me?
But then I started getting paranoid,
maybe my mom's questions were more like, what do you even do?
What is so special about you?
You're always on your computer?
Do you do anything?
And all of this thinking happening half a second
in my head, all of these fears and insecurities
just came as a burst in my mind.
And today, I want to talk about those things,
those dark thoughts that as a designer and as a creator,
are always present in my head.
And I want to share starting to deal with them.
So in a way today, stuck is kind of a self reflection.
And I hope it helps you in discovering and fighting
your own inner demons and, yeah.
But before that, let me go back to my mom.
My mom is a retired teacher.
She used to be a teacher at a middle school
for, like seriously, most of her life.
And she makes the spiciest enchiladas in the universe.
For those who don't know, enchiladas are like roll tacos,
smother in hot sauce, like really hot sauce.
And I'm not kidding, they are so hot that you
feel the burn twice, once when they come in and again,
when they come out.
Two for one.
So like I was telling you, my mom asked me, so Mijito,
what do you do?
Well, mom, I suppose this is a time
to confess that I am a designer.
Oh, si, designer.
Well, your cousin Juanita needs invitations
for her wedding, maybe you--
No, mom.
I don't design those kinds of things.
Now, I design things people use every day.
Oh, so like clothes?
Because your cousin Juanita is still looking
for a wedding dress and--
No.
Mom, I'm not a fashion designer.
I'm not that talented.
I design products.
Oh, products, wow.
Well, the chair in the living room has a broken--
No, mom, you don't understand.
I don't design physical products,
I design digital products.
And this is where my mom got a bit confused.
See, my mom didn't start using a smartphone or the interwebs
until a couple of years ago.
So all of this is kind of new to her,
but I knew how to explain this to her in a way
that she would understand.
See, we have had Facebook account since forever, right?
Well, my mom just started using it.
And not only my mom, but also my grandma.
In fact, they're the only people that still leave comments
on my doodles, and it's always the stickers
of dogs with hearts.
And they show me their support.
They're the sweetest, sweetest ladies.
So I told her, well, I designed things like that, mom.
Like, Facebook.
And she was like, oh.
I didn't even know if it was confusion, or just
disappointment.
Well, doesn't that already come with a telephone [INAUDIBLE]??
No, mama, you don't get it.
Someone has to design it, make decisions,
use typography, color palettes, use of flows,
and push [? those ?] pixels.
Very important stuff, Mom.
So and well, for my mom, those things are just stuff.
It just magically appears on her hand.
But she was happy with my responses.
OK, [INAUDIBLE] Mijo.
Very good, Mijito But I started wondering, why would
this bother me so much?
Why was I getting all defensive with my mom?
She was just curious, but somehow, her question,
what do you do, triggered something on me.
Suddenly, I was getting defensive.
I was trying to prove something.
And I wanted my mom to know that being a designer
was pretty cool.
I mean, maybe because I want my mom's approval,
I want her to be proud of me.
But there was something else too.
Her question provokes something in me, perhaps a trauma,
that I have as a designer, the feeling that I've always
have to defend what I do.
Suddenly, my mom's question transported me
to a meeting room full of executives
to whom I have to justify every little pixel on the screen.
The managers, the clients, the non designers
who just don't understand creative thinking,
they just don't get it.
They don't appreciate the struggle of the designer
and the power of imagination.
They just want their logos to be bigger and everything
to just pop.
You know who I'm talking about.
And as a designer, I always have to defend my decisions
and fight these people, who only think about numbers
and can understand creativity.
Oh, I'm just so traumatized by them.
But really, did I really suffer from a shock
of these past experiences?
Was I really traumatized?
Or was I just choosing to feel that way?
Could it be that I was just given a special meaning
to these experiences for a personal purpose?
What if I was just manufacturing this state of anxiety
to achieve a goal?
Could it be that instead of trying
to empathize with the people I designed for,
instead of listening, I had chosen
to see them as an adversary.
In my story, I had given them the role of my enemies, not
my allies.
And why?
Because this fits the narrative of me,
being special and misunderstood, because I am a creator.
In my story of the misunderstood designer,
I had to use that adversity to make
me feel unique, and special.
Because it's easier to believe this myth,
instead of doing the work of empathizing
and understanding where people are coming from.
By choosing this fiction, I don't have to explain myself.
I don't have to change.
It's they who are wrong.
Because opening up and listening,
means that I have to work.
And it makes me vulnerable.
And that exposes me to their criticism,
and I could face rejection.
But again, why?
Where does this all come from?
I think it's from a feeling of being small,
of feeling inferior.
As a designer and as an artist, I
had chosen to believe that I'm not as accomplished,
like as a doctor or a lawyer, like real professions.
And I had embraced the idea that my work is not
as valuable as others, like real artists.
But the funny thing is that I turned this feeling of weakness
into the opposite.
I just reverted to a feeling of superiority,
kind of like a defense mechanism, right.
I was able to do a switcheroo in my head
and converted that inferiority into something
that made me feel above others.
How did I do that?
I just became a designer who bragged about
how hard it is for him, oh, nobody understands me, oh, it's
so hard to be a designer.
Oh, I am a tormented artist.
My thinking is on a different level, oh.
My craft is unique and misunderstood.
Saying that to myself made me feel special,
it turned me into a martyr.
Because suddenly, I was the visionary,
the only person in the room who could see everything
so clearly.
Being the victim became an advantage, it was a cozy spot.
It's almost as if two little toddlers lived
in my head, the one who feel superior and misunderstood,
and the one who is in constant need for recognition.
But where does this all come from?
I believe that I developed this fear and uncertainty
about my craft and art by comparing myself to others.
Because I was measuring the value of my work against what
people thought of me and their judgment.
I was more eager to get the meeting rooms approval,
than I was worried about actually solving the problem,
almost as if I was in a fight or in a competition.
And when you're in a competition,
you're unable to value your own work, unless others recognize
it, you're always measuring it against others.
I had stopped creating with a purpose
and I started designing for praise.
And since I was always defending what I did,
I started protecting it, building walls around it.
I started being on the defensive and closing my work to others,
saying things like, oh, what I do is too complex.
You're not a designer, so you wouldn't understand.
Seriously, that was me.
Maybe I wouldn't say it out loud,
but I would at least think it.
I mean, what a jerk, right?
Who would want to work with this guy?
But what could I do?
How could I start feeling more confident about what I did?
And how could I stop being so arrogant?
Well, I guess, I could just do the opposite, right?
Just simple, so I could just start
by not trying to fulfill all those expectations by not
seeking their recognition, and worrying more
about the problem at hand.
And also, my own values.
But the thing is that when you do this, you also
have to be OK with rejection, with your work being criticized
and put up for review, you have to be comfortable with opening
up and becoming vulnerable.
But as an artist, the idea felt so bizarre to me,
because doing the things that people like
was kind of my job description, like doing pretty things.
But now, I was confused.
Now, as a creator my need for approval, it is still there,
but now it comes from me.
I don't seek it from the praise of others
and now it comes from my own growth,
and enjoying the process.
As an artist my attention is to develop my craft
and it's not about comparing my work against others.
Now, I only compare against my own, my past work,
so I can see my progress and I compare it to my ideal.
So it keeps me motivated and moving forward
on what's important, the here and now.
And I'll admit, the fear doesn't go away,
the fear is always there.
And there's still that little voice
that makes me feel small and in fear.
But now, I'm choosing not to define me,
I'm choosing not to be the victim anymore and accept
who I am.
Now, it might seem like I'm saying that, my solution is
just to stop listening to others, screw them all, right?
But no, as a designer, a big part of my job
is also to listen to people, but I
had to switch from listening with self interest
to listen with a concern for them.
Because when you're looking for praise or approval
you only listen in a self-centered way,
you're only looking for the things that benefit you.
So instead of thinking how would this person help me,
I started asking, how can I help this person?
For me the answer to this question,
was to share my knowledge.
That was kind of like, oh, my calling.
To open up as an artist and designer,
empower others to be designers too.
To give them the ability to build, create and solve
their own problems.
I used to think that I was in a competition,
so I would see people as my rivals or a threat,
even my mom.
So I would defend my work and knowledge
against their judgements, and close the doors,
so they wouldn't have a valid argument against me,
because I didn't trust them.
But then I realized that I'm not in a competition.
That I can have confidence in others and I can contribute.
So then my purpose in life, became
to bring down those barriers of design
that I had helped build, and allow others to create,
to fight the myth that only a select few are creative,
and that I was part of a special club that gets
it, the elite of artists and designers.
And now I see that in creativity, there's abundance.
And my purpose is to allow people
to discover that they also have a story to tell,
to help them recognize their own capacity to create.
As an exercise of this, I start giving free design workshops
in San Francisco.
Next, I was sharing my knowledge with video courses.
Yes, I became a YouTuber as you can see.
Then it became about open sourcing [? tools ?]
so people could use them on their own creations.
And now, I'm proud to be part of a team,
working and allowing people to discover,
to create it's superpowers with Blush,
and bring other artists to believe
in this idea of abundance too.
Other artists who also think, that we can give to the world,
instead of expecting what the world gives to you.
And I don't know, look at all the cool stuff
that people create with the blush studios.
I don't know, with this gift from other artists.
Certainly, my worth as a designer
isn't based on others opinions for recognition's of my work.
Now, it is an understanding that I'm part of a global community,
just like the Figma community.
And what I can do so others can be creative too.
So more recently, when my mom asked me again, so Mijito,
what do you do?
I didn't get defensive, I didn't get trigger.
I just told her, I try to help others to be creative.
Like I tell you, my mom is a retired teacher,
so she said, "OK, Mijito, it is maestro, you're a teacher."
Si, Mama, I am a teacher, I am a maestro.
And she was finally pleased.
Here's my mom, the one person from whom I still
seek her approval.
Yeah, that's me, that's her.
My hair sometimes is just too big and it's on her face.
And, yeah, look at that.
Oh, my God.
And I would love to continue this conversation.
You can follow me on almost all the social media
as Pablo Stanley.
And I think, also on Figma, just as Pablo.
And also, you can create really awesome doodles
with blush, @blush.design.
And that's it.
Thank you.
Muchas gracias.