David Kelley, founder of design firm IDEO, delivered a brilliant TED talk last year on the topic of building your creative confidence. If he’d given his talk three years ago, it would have influenced the way I framed Mighty Ugly.
Watch for his description of research by psychologist Albert Bandura, about how people’s overall confidence increases when they conquer a clinical phobia. This line of reasoning is exactly what underlies Mighty Ugly – to conquer the fear (or, more generally in the case of MU, to work through the uncomfortable aspects of creating) allows us to, as Kelley explains, try harder, persevere longer, and be more resilient in the face of failure.