Your art is a gift
I had a couple of conversations recently that made me think. Why do we keep creating art when it’s so often not the easiest route? I made a short video about this that you can watch above.
To summarize… I think that all of us have two things that we want in life:
One of them is to uncover our most authentic self. Our what I call our core creative essence. This is who you are at your core. This is what people see when they look at your artwork because it comes through and it touches them. It's sparks, joy and connection to them. That's your essence.
The first step to getting unstuck.
Years ago when I was working as an illustrator, I got hired for what I thought was the best gig I'd ever had. It was the gig I'd been working towards for most of my career.
But during the job, I felt nothing but frustration, angst, stress, and annoyance. Afterward, when I actually saw the product I had worked so hard on, I felt defeated. I was supposed to feel proud and excited about this work but all I felt was annoyed and completely burnt out.
The very simple equation to feeling good.
Have you ever noticed that when you are doing things you love, working towards a goal that is meaningful, or contributing to the greater good it just FEELS AMAZING? And when you are neglecting yourself, your dreams, or working towards something that is not meaningful to you, you feel bad? You may even get depressed, angry, or blame yourself.
Our biology has evolved to SHOW US HOW TO FEEL GOOD.
The FLOW research also backs this up.
Why we abandon ourselves
From a very very young age, I felt like everyone around me wanted me to be what THEY wanted. Which left very little room for me to discover WHO I ACTUALLY WAS and EXPRESS THAT. I was a natural people pleaser so I took on all of these other identities and buried my ESSENCE somewhere deep inside of me.
Then for most of my life, I would do things to ABANDON MYSELF. Like going to a party when I wanted to stay home or doing things for others when I really needed to take care of myself.