The hardest thing in the world is to decide, to commit, to risk being dead wrong. Most of us want to have some sense that what we are choosing for ourselves, our art and our creative businesses is going to work out.
It is why change is so hard. Usually, something has to be either horribly broken or the opportunity beyond huge to make change the only solution. Everything in the middle drives us back to deciding by not deciding (which, of course, is a decision, but that is the subject of another post). Inertia is a great way to convince yourself that the path you are on will get you to where you want to go in the end. The known kicking the ass of the unknown. You fill in the cliché – devil you know, bird in the hand, etc.
I would make a terrible farmer. Chop wood, carry water, do your chores, rinse and repeat every day. My life is questioning, well, everything. I do not do well with blinders narrowing my vision. I would rather see the possibility in front of me than the reality of what is behind me. While I am apt to over think things, I refuse to be constrained by anything related to the status quo. I do what I do because I am very good at imagining a different reality, another way of doing things, possibilities of what could be. And yet I still suck at making decisions. Inertia is a powerful mistress.
No one has any great insight into decisions. The only thing anyone can offer is perspective on the choices you are considering and how they may or may not affect you, your art and your creative business. There is no such thing as a perfect decision, just one more right than not. EVERY decision has consequences. The point is to accept those consequences for what they are and ask yourself if you can live with them. If you were offered a project that would pay you two million dollars in nine months, is the answer an automatic yes? If you had to leave your family and travel across the world? If it meant passing on your passion project that you fervently believe in? If the client is not necessarily the right client but the project just that good?
Decisions change the trajectory of your creative business much more than they define the moment. Sounds ass-backwards right? Sure, there are humiliations, world-class boners and homers, but they are few and far between. Most often it is the accumulation of daily movements towards your vision. Each decision builds on the next in an ever (upward) spiral. A decision is right or wrong only in the sense of intention, intuition and a willingness to search inward.
The sweetest irony is that decisions require patience, stillness and reflection. Whatever you are confronted with, impulse awakens you to your intuition, stillness allows intuition to marinate, wisdom reflects the road you are meant to travel down. Gravitas belongs to the tremors, the ripples. Only ego takes you away from the import of subtlety and allows the delusion that the big decision stands on its own without context. Decisions are never easy or for the faint of heart. They are the stuff of integrity and faith that the result is ultimately irrelevant to the conviction of your next decision.
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It’s true. You can identify the real winners in any industry (or market, or business) by simply looking at the ones who are making decisions, embracing true change, in a word: exploring.
Things that remain stagnant often wilt and die, but the artist or business executive who decides to do something (new or because she has to) is going to stumble onto big wins a lot quicker than those who sit by idly with fear.