A couple of weeks ago, I spoke about success and failure, a lot more about failure than success. However the two are absloutely linked, and they feed off each other. When we fail we want to try harder to be successful. It is my belief that no great achievement is reached without many failures along the way.
Interestingly, I was listening to one of Brene Browns books this week on shame resilience. It seems to me that one of our major shame triggers is failure. Why failure?
Because failure always awakens that deeply felt soul injury of not being enough. We want to succeed and every time we fall short of that mark we feel like we don't measure up - whether that measurement is against ourselves, or someone elses acheivement really makes no difference. It all began with trying to please our parents. So a question to ask is - Who am I trying to please now- and why?
Let's talk about being successful with our work. One of the hard things for many artists is the ability to stay true to their vision. It's easy to be swayed. We might be swayed by our partner, our gallery, friends opinions or a myriad of other reasons that cause us to drift off course. The problem is that the more we listen to others, the further away we get from the core of what's true for us, our vision. Here is an example of how that can play out.
Several years ago, I was putting the finishing touches on a painting and my partner came in to the studio and stood there looking at it for a while. I made the mistake of turning around and saying, 'So what do you think?' BIG mistake.
He proceeded to point out a section of the painting that I was actually quite happy with, and telling me why he thought it wasn't OK.
So, what did I do? I thought about it for a bit and decided that maybe, just this once, I'd give him the benefit of the doubt, so I changed it. Did it work? Nope! Was I happy? Nope! Was I angry? You bet! and you know what, I never did get that piece of the painting right again and I was never happy with the painting. He thought it was alright, but I knew it wasn't.
This was a big lesson for me. DONT EVER change something in a painting on the basis of someone else's opinion, if they know nothing about art. Why?
# Because - well, they Don't know anything about art.
# They also aren't viewing the work from your perspective.
# They don't have an artist's eye.
# You are changining it for the wrong reason - to please someone else, not because that's what the painting requires.
So part of the lesson here, is that as an aritst, I must learn to trust my own inner voice. That day, I was definitely ignoring it, and regretted it later. The more I develop my connection to the quantum, creative source, the better I will be able to hear and execute that subtle help, that is always there, if I can just be clear enough to listen to it.
NEXT WEEK: How to Understand The Way You Are Wired - A book review
Pix: Courtesy of Pixabay
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