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- [00:01]
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Welcome to five Minute Magic from the Mindful Creative Podcast, a short bonus episode sharing tips and insights from the pages of the book of the same title. Every week, I'll be sharing one or two ideas that can give you an actionable takeaway for your creative process, your work, your business, or just food for thought for the weekend ahead. These episodes share content from the audiobook and you can find a link to the full version in the show Notes Life where is your mind? That's the first line from the second chapter, titled Mindful in my book Mindful Creative. The first few chapters focus on the sources of overwhelm. We want to be busy, right? But when it gets all too much, we wish for the opposite. Most creatives seek only help after reaching the breaking point. While acknowledging the universal truth that everyone, regardless of success, faces personal and professional struggles. The previous bonus episode touched on lessons in resilience. Here we talk about a balance of emotional and time investment in creative work and finding adequate time and space for craft and managing life's demands. And here's a little insight. The chapter quote I was going to use was chosen from James Clear's book Atomic Habits. You don't always get to choose the load, but you can choose how to carry it. And this is pretty much the purpose of the chapter. Mindful in the ways of recognizing what makes us too overloaded and heavy in a way to become a more mindful lighter and happier with our work.
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Chapter 2 Mindful where is your mind? This section looks at how the creative and personal elements of our lives can conspire to overwhelm our minds. The best place for us to start is to take a minute right now and ask yourself where your mind is at today. How are you doing? How much is on your mind at the moment? Are you looking out for yourself enough? If not, what action can you take, however small, to change that? If when you're in a position to probe a little further, take the time to consider some longer term questions too. How much is too much for your mind? And to return to something we talked about in the previous section, do you know where you're going? Few things can upset our mental scales more than a lack of direction, especially when we're traveling fast. The Honest Truth here's the truth you're most likely to consider buying and reading a book like this. When you've gone past the point of those questions, being able to help you avoid a crash, you're already in the ditch. We always think we can push it that little bit further. After I finish this job once this invoice gets paid before the shit hits the fan. This isn't a criticism, it's an observation. And whatever stage you've bought this book at, I congratulate you for having the intention to look after yourself from this point on. Another honest truth is that no one has got it right all the time. However much they want you to believe otherwise, or however much you want to believe it. No one is happy, creative or fulfilled. All day, every day, everyone goes through ups and downs, both mental and material. No one's diary is perfect and no one's portfolio is to their complete satisfaction. There's always some mundane worry or bother seeping through the cracks. You might think you'd love to have the kinds of worries that someone with a more glamorous portfolio or reputation has, but it's all relative. Allowing yourself to realize this is both levelling and liberating. It dials up your compassion and empathy because you come to truly appreciate that beneath the sheen and the speed, behind the filters and the follow accounts, we creatives all have our fragile humanity in common. It's okay to admit that, the same as it's okay to ask for help. Just as importantly, if we are all essentially equal, then it follows that our creative peers only look better, smarter, stronger and more talented if we place them on that pedestal. If we apply that filter, this is obviously another balancing act, not an excuse for believing that no effort is needed because you're inherently as great as the most successful names in your field. Even with luck and connections, it can take a long time. A lot of hard graft and a few risks paying off to get a good thing going, especially if you're flying solo. It can also take a long time to understand and appreciate the power in the mirror. Realizing that the people you thought were so much better than you also suffer from doubts and worries won't automatically cure your doubts and worries. Success, whatever that means to you, will forever be the sum of many parts in both your inner and outer worlds. New skills still have to be learned. Crap jobs still have to be seen through action, and responsibilities still have to be taken. You still have to show up. You still have to invest. Investment. Like anything that requires cultivation or maintenance, your creativity and your creative business will reflect your investment in them. If you don't polish your shelves, they'll get dusty. If you don't practice your skills, they'll get rusty. Investing in your creativity obviously entails more than money. You also invest your time and your emotions. We're going to look at both here and Explore where the sweet spot is and where too much or too little can create unnecessary pain. Emotional investment Our creative process and its output are hugely influenced by how much we care about it. At the start of our journey, we can make, or at least be prepared to make, an intense emotional investment in our work. After all, we are our creativity and vice versa. This is necessary because if we didn't start with high expectations of ourselves and what we could achieve, we'd never get anywhere. From this hopeful starting point, two paths can generally be taken. You can keep investing your emotion in your work, striving for recognition and building your reputation and portfolio. This is healthy so long as it doesn't become too intense and stray into obsessive perfectionism, People pleasing and or outright megalomania. I can and I must do it all. The other path is perhaps more common because it's downhill and therefore easier to take. We get used to achieving a certain standard of work and perhaps a certain safe level of income. If we secure a couple of regular clients, we stop caring about whether we're credited for our work or not. As long as it pays, we clock in, churn out and clock off. As a result, tasks that once would have taxed our creative skills become like mechanical labor and our creative powers can suffer. As a result, we lose interest and become apathetic, which is particularly dangerous when you're running a business in a competitive field. Emotional investment in what you do is important, especially in a vocation known for its high expectations. But as the warning on stock investment websites goes, don't invest more than you can afford to lose. A half arsed hack is no good to anybody, but neither is a burnt out control freak. If you're attempting to build a reputation in a field such as music, art or literature, then emotional investment is absolutely vital. The majority who work for success in those fields have to begin without an audience or a network. And building both of those things can feel like trying to dig the foundations of a house on your own in the pouring rain. We struggle along without recognition, often without getting the lucky break or meeting the right person to champion our cause. But to have any chance of getting those things, we have to put something of ourselves into our work. And we have to put our work out there, which further eats into our actual creative time.