I know what it’s like to feel like giving up on your artistic vision. You’ve had many setbacks. A project is taking longer than you’d planned, people seem less excited, disinterested, you’re not sure how you will find the money to finish, you drop your cell phone and the screen cracks and everything spirals out of control from there. You step away from everything for a while to “get yourself together”.  This said, while it is challenging, it can be done and, in this article, I will share one of the core factors that motivated me through the roughest periods of my artist entrepreneurship journey to date.  You can get through any difficult challenge in life as long as you decide that you are willing to work through it. And, you must decide to work through it because there is nothing else in the world worth fighting or suffering for more than your artistic purpose. Then, you finally sit down to work on your project and you think to yourself: where do I begin? 

MINDSET

Success is a mindset. If at any moment while reading this article you feel overwhelmed: I recommend that you listen to this meditation podcast: “Emotional Clearing” by Jesse & Jean Stern.

Getting started on a project after you have walked away from it is difficult. But this is the reality of entrepreneurship. At the core of artist entrepreneurship is a concept that Stephen R. Covey calls proactivity.

I know what it’s like to feel like giving up on your artistic vision. You’ve had many setbacks. A project is taking longer than you’d planned, people seem less excited, disinterested, you’re not sure how you will find the money to finish, you drop your cell phone and the screen cracks and everything spirals out of control from there. You step away from everything for a while to “get yourself together”.  This said, while it is challenging, it can be done and, in this article, I will share one of the core factors that motivated me through the roughest periods of my artist entrepreneurship journey to date.  You can get through any difficult challenge in life as long as you decide that you are willing to work through it. And, you must decide to work through it because there is nothing else in the world worth fighting or suffering for more than your artistic purpose. Then, you finally sit down to work on your project and you think to yourself: where do I begin? 

First, your artistic purpose is just that: yours. Don’t ask anyone for help in the beginning. (More likely than not, they will only discourage you.) To get back on track and stay there, you have to remember that you are responsible for your future and no one else. Second, celebrate what you have already accomplished. Launching your own artistic career based on your own unique vision is bold and exciting. Finding the energy to start your own business and come up with new ideas for artistic products is not nearly as challenging as it is to know exactly how to channel your energy on a monthly, weekly, daily basis. Yes, it is challenging but the long term benefits are worthwhile.  Third, once you have accepted responsibility for your future and have celebrated yourself, it’s time to flex your proactivity muscles.

To do this we can visit one of my go-to books when I need to get motivated to keep going. The widely read book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, influences how I use my time and energy every day and it has some keys to success for artists on the journey to entrepreneurship who want to stay focused on the right things, that is, the things that we can control.

Proactive people focus on the Circle of Influence, these are the things that you can do something about.

Only after you accept failure, can you be empowered to change. The second step to overcoming failure requires taking a new perspective of what failure actually means. A failure is an unmet expectation. It can be seen as a failure. It can also be seen as an experience and experience is the best education. If you are living your purpose, each failure is an indicator of where you need to grow. Having a purpose does not mean that you were born fully prepared to pursue it. A part of your ability to succeed rests on how well you can latch on to the lessons in personal development that failure teaches. Failure means you need to grow in ways that will equip you to succeed. Failures are lessons. Nothing more, nothing less. Viewed this way, you haven’t failed you simply need to refine your expectations with the new information you have learned.

To grow, you need two things: humility and patience. Letting go of expectations means realizing that your purpose is a lifelong pursuit so you must be humble enough to be able to acknowlegde that you set expectations without fully understanding some aspect of that expectation. It then means that once you recognize where you need to grow you take the time to develop these areas.