The ‘aspiring’ trap.
You don’t need to be the best to be something.
A trap I see people fall into often is self-describing as an aspiring something.
For young people in particular, who have dreams of achieving success in a particular field, social media bios are populated with ‘aspiring author’ or ‘aspiring director’.
My advice? Remove the word aspiring from your self description.
If you’ve practiced the craft more than a handful of times, you are that. Identify as that thing. You might not have been paid or hired, you might have only done that work for yourself independently, you might not be very good yet — but you are that thing.
When I started football writing, I said I was an analyst, because I analysed football. Through years of (public) work, I’ve now done so in a professional capacity frequently.
I suppose what’s cool is calling yourself that thing early provides a mental framing that (for some reason) makes you more likely to be successful at that thing.
It’s internalised confirmation that, ‘yep, I am that, I can do that, and I can be successful doing so.’
Tell yourself what you are and it’ll help you become what you want.
UMIR.
Note: this obviously excludes vocations that require rigorous vetting processes like Medicine and Law. But most things don’t. Recognising that is another truth that unlocks parts of the world you didn’t first realise were accessible.