206: Focus on Self-Trust

What if trusting yourself doesn’t mean knowing you’re right? In this episode of The Focus Trap, Amy and Casey dig into self-trust — what it actually means, how it’s different from confidence, and what happens when you’re so busy looking for the right answer that you stop listening to your own. In photography, that can show up everywhere from deciding whether you like a photo to making creative choices, taking feedback, and figuring out which advice is actually useful. Amy talks about how 25 years of photography and business have given her evidence for what she knows works, even when her approach doesn’t make sense to everyone else. She also explains why critique isn’t about whether she personally likes your photograph, why she wants a photo to “have an opinion,” and how her mathematical approach to photography gives creativity a structure without deciding what someone else’s creative voice should be. Casey comes at self-trust from the perspective of learning: what happens when you’re building new skills while also trying not to outsource every decision to someone with more experience. She talks about external validation, noticing your first reaction before you override it, and learning to separate “this didn’t work” from “I can’t trust myself.” They also talk about: Why getting feedback is its own skill The difference between pretty photographs and photographs with impact When experience helps self-trust — and when ignorance might help too Trusting your instincts while culling and editing Why your first reaction to a photograph is useful information Finding the structure underneath “whimsy and sparkles” Along the way, there are conversations about birds on sticks, compliment sandwiches, Amy’s deeply unfortunate mental image of a social media “hook,” whimsy and sparkles, and the idea that Amy and Casey might collectively add up to one functional wedding photographer. (They are not accepting bookings.) ------------------- Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. Email us at [email protected] 📸 Find Amy and learn more about her photography coaching: https://www.skool.com/focus-makers-5374/about 🧠 Find Casey and learn more about what she's up to: www.caseyjourdan.com And follow The Focus Trap @thefocustrap on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok (00:00) - Self-Trust in Creative Photography Dynamics (00:42) - What Does Self-Trust Even Mean? (04:15) - It Isn’t About Whether I Like Your Photo (12:44) - Your Photo Should Have an Opinion (14:02) - Self-Trust, Experience, and a Little Ignorance (22:07) - Whimsy and Sparkles vs. the Math of Photography (30:56) - How Do You Rebuild Self-Trust?