In your best place, you know there is more than enough for everyone; the more you give the more will be given. Creativity is its own success no matter the result. If only you were always in your best place.
Today, it feels impossible to believe in abundance. The whole point of Thanksgiving is to find our way to abundance, connection and family (yes, I understand the dark underbelly but choose to stay here for the moment). A place to be grateful. I have enjoyed Seth Godin’s Thanksgiving Reader since it came out in 2015 and perhaps it can carry us back to gratefulness and a feeling of harvest despite the isolation and the knowledge that so many of us are hungry in all ways — physically, spiritually, emotionally.
Yes, there is hope. There might be a vaccine, a new administration in the United States, magnificent technological advances. This winter is and will be cold and brutal indeed and these are the thoughts of Spring. No way through but through.
In so many ways, the pandemic and all things 2020 has made it easier to give up and to think that you will not be able to make or do what you need to do to support yourself, your family and your creative business. Hey, COVID. You can drive yourself so crazy as to make the fear overwhelming and interminable, trying as hard as you can to kill your creative spirit.
The reason I go here is because when we fail (as we all do more than we succeed), you can say to yourself, “I told you so, it was a dumb idea anyway and stupid to even try.” Whether that is to “pivot”, to hibernate, even to give up, in this place we ignore the harm we cause to ourselves and to those around us. The test of resilience is not endurance, it is desire, grit and faith in the singular effort of motion. Professionals show up every day, test themselves every day no matter how they feel, challenge themselves to keep going even if it means to stop until the path reveals itself.
You can only come back to yourself when you remember just how much love there is — your love of creation, of family, of community, of tomorrow. Mourn the death of what was even as it is dying, allow the five stages to wash over you. Do not deny the process of suffering as healing is never resolute only the willingness to move forward, to evolve.
There will always be naysayers and haters. People who stay stuck to the fear of what the future might bring instead of its infinite possibility. In these, the darkest of times, the light is a wisp and the dark is there wherever you turn. If you listen, you will probably hear YOUR fear masked as their judgment of what you are trying to do. If you can have empathy for them and yourself, maybe you can get past their voice and let your own authentic expression of your art carry the day. Abundance does abound only if we choose to believe it does and requires the faith imagine a future not yet lived.
And that is the thing about emotionality — depravation savors abundance and is muted by expectation. Do not let that happen to you art or your creative business. While you might find yourself denied access today to create as you desire, you have the opportunity, a singular opportunity, to redefine all that will be when the door reopens as it most certainly will. The butterfly remembers what is was to be a caterpillar even as it is unbound from the ground.
I am absolutely not saying that if you ignore the doubting voices and judgments (internal and external) you will be successful. Whether the time is right for your new idea/strategy or whether its execution effective, is largely a matter of fate. What I am saying is shipping is its own reward. It IS incredibly scary to put yourself out there in a wholly new light. So actually doing it is remarkable in itself. Scarier still is the idea of staying true to your initiative and giving it the best chance to thrive when the inevitable roadblocks come your way.
Just because the world wants and needs what you have to give does not mean it is going to make it easy for you to do it. The fight to get paid for the beauty that rests between your ears will be fraught by those who are unaware of its depth. Keep going.
