Mindset

The Importance Of Mindset For Artists And Creatives

Your mindset can make or break the success in your business and in your creative life, both in the moment and over time. Here’s how to address a mindset that’s holding you back and make the necessary changes that will set you up for success.

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Photo by Rebe Pascual on Unsplash

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Defining “Mindset”

Another way to think about mindset is to use a different term – set of beliefs, worldview, or perspective, maybe.

Your mindset encompasses everything you think, believe, perceive,etc to be true about something.

You have a mindset about food, sports, religion, politics, business, and yourself.

As I’m sending this the day before an election in the United States, you can see how someone’s mindset can affect their opinions and decisions.

If your mindset is that there are “sides”, and that the “other side” is bad, then you’re going to vote the opposite of that side, right?

You can start to see how a mindset can be a good thing or a bad thing. That it can enable you or limit you in what you’re able to choose, do, and achieve in your life.

Why Your Mindset Matters

Let’s refocus on our business. What are some common beliefs that people have that hold them back?

  • I can’t because…
  • I don’t have money/equipment/connections/time
  • I’m not ready
  • It’s never been done before
  • They can because they have all these advantages…

Now, how enabling is that mindset? Does this set of beliefs help you feel inspired or motivated? Heck no!

We haven’t even started to try yet, and we’ve shot ourselves in the foot mentally.

Without a proper mindset – proper being defined as something that helps you, not hurts you or holds you back – you will never become what you seek to become.

Ever.

There are two types of mindsets we want to look at this month – momentary and global.

The global mindset is the long-held beliefs and views that you’ve held for a long time, the things that guide your life.

  • Money is good/bad
  • Being an artist is/isn’t worth the risk
  • The purpose of my life is…

These are worth looking at to make sure that the things you believe still align with who you are now. It’s common to find that we still have beliefs instilled by our parents or teachers from when we were younger that have never been reconsidered or checked.

As you age – go through college, relationships, job and career changes – your beliefs can change, but you need to give yourself permission to look at those long-held beliefs and question if they’re serving you or holding you back.

The momentary mindset is where you are in the moment.

  • How you feel when you wake up
  • How you feel when you get to the office
  • Whether you’re stuck on a project or not
  • How you interact with others
  • How you feel when you get home
  • How you treat your partner and kids

This is where I want to start today to get some quick wins for you and your mindset.

How To Start Changing Today For The Better

Take a minute and review the last week. How many times did your momentary mindset cause you to feel frustrated, lazy, crappy, unworthy, looked down on, or insignificant?

How many times did you feel great when you got up, ready to face the day? How many great interactions did you have that left you and the others you were with feeling lifted and happy when you left? How many moments of joy did you experience throughout the week?

What do you see when you think about these two sets of questions? Is your mindset helping you or hurting you?

Here’s the awesome news: You are 100% in control of your mindset.

No one else has any power over whether you feel good or bad, inspired and motivated or down and out.

Mindset is a choice.

As we’ve seen in the examples in this post, the way you choose to show up has a dramatic affect on your ability to do the creative work you seek to do.

It affects your interactions, your work, your clients, your fans, your relationships, and the success or failure of your business.

So, today, make a new choice.

Do you want to improve your mindset? Then choose to do it.

Do you want to show up in a different way at work and at home? Then choose to do so.

Remember, it’s 100% in your control.

Daren

PS – If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe using the form below to get new posts in your inbox to get you prepared for a massively successful year in 2021.

If you’re looking for more on mindset, check out the Make Something course on Craftsman Creative – the first few modules are a deep dive into mindset and aligning your beliefs with your actions to get the most out of your creative work.

Why You Need Faith In Your Creative Business

Faith isn’t reserved for just the spiritual part of your life. Applying it in your business is essential to having the success you want from your work.

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Photo by Alex Radelich on Unsplash

This post is part of the 60 Day Project – one post a day to help you prepare your business for success in 2021. Subscribe using the button below to get new posts sent straight to your email.

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Defining Faith

I consider myself a person of faith. I was raised as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), and still am very active in my church.

I served for two years as a missionary in Washington D.C. – I paid my own way to live in the D.C. area and preach the gospel and serve as many people as I could in that time period.

In the past, faith was akin to “blind obedience”, or “doing it for spiritual reasons”.

But now, after the experiences of the last few years, I define it this way:

Faith = Belief + Action

In a spiritual sense, this could mean that we live our lives in a way that aligns with the things we believe in – that there is a God, whose Son came to earth to atone for our sins, and if we live righteously we will be blessed in eternity.

That belief in God and in the gospel of Jesus Christ determines the actions I take on a daily basis.

Applying Faith To A Creative Business

So how to apply that to our work lives.

First, it helps to know what you believe in. A few examples:

  • If I work hard, I’ll be rewarded
  • If I put the needs of others first, the money will follow
  • If I am honest in my dealings with others, I’ll attract honest partners
  • More money isn’t inherently better, it’s merely a tool that I can utilize to do more good.
  • Mastering my mindset is an important key to success as a creative business owner

Having those beliefs alone doesn’t lead to any results. I can believe all day that “if I watch enough shows on Netflix, I’ll one day be asked to create my own show for the platform and work with the best actors and make millions of dollars”.

False!

The beliefs have to be based in some sort of reality, but also need to be matched with equivalent action.

Having that sense of alignment, where our actions support our beliefs, leads to those beliefs being reinforced and realized over time.

I’ve found that to be true in my own career. By checking in regularly to make sure that my actions are supporting and reinforcing my beliefs, I find that the “blessings” come.

How to implement this principle:

List out the things you believe to be true in business.

For each one, ask what set of actions would support that belief (or what inaction would cost you).

Check in regularly with your actions and your beliefs to make sure that they are in alignment. Be grateful for the moments when your beliefs are reinforced in different ways, and when things aren’t working out, use your FAITH as a guide to what it is you want in your creative life and take action to make it real.

Structure Your Life Around Moments Of Joy

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Quite an unexpected topic/lesson this week.

I usually write about some strategy that I implemented and how it succeeded or failed, or some lesson I learned throughout the week.

This week, however, is a bit more introspective…

The Importance Of Joy

What is your work for?

Is it to make money? For fame? Influence?

I’d suggest that any of those external, monetary, or “vanity” type measurements fall short to give us what we really are after: Joy.

I define joy as a combination of happiness and fulfillment.

It’s happiness squared. A deeper, more visceral feeling.The more JOY we can experience in our life, the better our life will be

There were two very specific moments of JOY for me recently:

A Sunset

The other night, I was taking out the trash and caught the sunset.

Now, sunset pictures from a phone never really do it justice. But in that moment, I stopped, and took a deep breath, and realized how good it felt to be outside, in perfect weather, catching this fleeting moment that will never ever exist in the same way.

I couldn’t help but smile, and feel a deep sense of gratitude and joy.

A Soccer Game

The second time was watching my son play in his soccer game. They’d had an incredible, undefeated season, and in the next half of the season they’re going to move up a tier in their division because they’re “too good”.

(Their average score for the season was 8-1)

Hearing the coach say this, and seeing how hard my son and his team had worked, made the game that much more exciting to watch.

And then, in the second half, my son scored a goal.

He’s not much of a goal scorer. He’s much more suited to the midfield positions where the strengths are in seeing the field, making the passes, and getting the ball to the forwards who have much better footwork and confidence in shooting.

But the cross came. My son was in perfect position. He connected with the ball perfectly and placed it into the upper left corner of the goal.

The keeper never had a chance.

It was a perfect moment, followed by one of the most pure moments of celebration I’d seen from him. The team cheered – he rarely scores, so it was a big deal for everyone.

Now – what’s missing in these two moments?

Neither of them are about business…

The two most joyous moments of my life in the last two weeks had nothing to do with revenue, marketing, sales, clients, products, or the like.

I take a lot of pride in my work. But it’s not my greatest source of joy.

With that realization, I had to reflect on what my business was actually for.

Yes, I want to reach as many people as possible. Yes, I want to provide a good life for my family and me.

But if I chose to spend more time in my business, optimizing for reach or revenue, I’d miss out completely on these moments of joy.

If you work until late into the night, you’ll miss the sunsets.

Working on weekends, and you’ll miss the games.

Life isn’t about building the biggest best business and getting results.

Life isn’t life without these moments of joy.

So, I asked myself, how can I structure my life to create more of these moments?

Again, not what I was expecting to take away from this week.

Where Does Your Joy Come From?

Does your deepest moments of joy, happiness, gratitude, fulfillment come from your work? Your family? Being outdoors? Working out?

Whatever it is, the more that you can structure your life around having these moments on a daily basis, the better your quality of life.

What’s one thing that brings you an insane amount of joy? Can you make room for that to happen today? This week?

Without a sense of joy and gratitude in our lives on a regular basis, it’s near impossible to share those emotions with others in your work.

Bring more joy into your lives, and you can then share more with those you seek to serve with your business.

Want to learn more about finding joy in your creative life? Check out my course Make Something on Craftsman Creative.

The first few modules talk about 6 Human Needs Psychology, which really means how to find joy and fulfillment in your life and work.