You deserve nothing, but you have earned it all.
Where do you go with the statement? Feel like somehow your effort entitles you to rewards? Do you get angry at the notion that you deserve nothing?
I love a new year because it is the beginning, a chance at redemption, a prayer that things will be better, even if things are pretty good already. An annual do over. No comment on the effectiveness of resolutions or how you hope 2014 will transform you. Only an idea that what might come is a function of today, not yesterday or tomorrow.
Change is hard and it sucks no matter how good it is for us. What feels like overnight never is and yet happens faster than we can ever believe. So instead of looking back at what 2013 was or was not for you or thinking (hoping?) what you will make 2014, how about you do neither? Take stock of where you are today.
Who do you believe yourself to be? Your creative business? Your art? Can you prove it? My guess is that you cannot, or at least not all of it. If you are a designer (graphic, interior, event, fashion, etc.), how can you take a fifty percent deposit without doing anything? Indefensible in my book. The word designer in your name presumes you actually design something that your client will like or not. If they do, awesome, away you go with production. But if they do not? Are they really going to walk away from half of their money? Explain it however you want but you trapped them when they said yes to working with you. What would it mean if you took a twenty percent deposit and got paid the other thirty percent (or more) when they approved your design (i.e., gave them their voice back)?
Reputation earns you access, nothing more. You do not deserve the benefit of the doubt simply because your client said yes to hiring you. You earn the benefit of the doubt with your process, your integrity and your respect for your creative business, your art first, client second. I do not agree that the client is always right. It is your business. That said, clients have to be able to make meaningful decisions based on the best information your creative business can provide. And you have to live with those decisions.
Best information you can provide. Hmmm. That is A LOT of work. Do you cheat? How tempting is it to race ahead to get done? To just say “trust me” and move on. Or do you really work hard to educate your clients? Then again you still take that fifty percent deposit. You deserve nothing, but you earn it all.
Forgive yourself. We are all human and we all want what we imagine is possible. Except living the truth, your truth and that of your creative business is always a work in progress and asks that we own our humility. Yes, the truth will set you free. However, in freedom is uncertainty. Nothing is more terrifying than swimming without knowing where land is or if it will ever appear. Yet, swim you must. Living in the uncertainty is where change happens. From that place, what will come, will come. After all, you will have earned it.
