The Unlikely Artist

We tend to secretly believe that our perfectionism is a good thing. We believe it means we have excellent standards. That’s why we feel proud when we share with someone, “I’m a perfectionist”.

The same obstacle that impedes an artist’s creativity will also dull your shine, even if you’re a person with no creative aspirations.

In this episode, I describe 4 situations where an artist’s creativity was challenged by this obstacle. I diagnose the common mistake and share how a similar pattern of thinking can dramatically and detrimentally affect how you show up, no matter what your area of focus is. I don’t want to give this episode away by telling you what the obstacle is ahead of time. Tune in to find out.

When you follow the advice I share at the end of this episode, the quality of what you put out into the world will improve dramatically AND you’ll find yourself feeling more energized and alive.

Sit back and enjoy this interview with Jeff Madoff as he shares his wisdom about creative careers and business. There’s lots of relevant information in this episode for you to digest, whether you’re pursuing a creative career or not.

Our discussion covers:

Why so many people shut themselves down creatively.

How to create a safe space to encourage people to share their full creative expression and make their best contributions.

Jeff’s journey to become a top fashion designer in the US by the age of 22.

His ideas about making a living from fulfilling and engaging work.

How to price your work, product or services.

The way you define failure and why that makes the difference between a successful creative career and one that doesn’t get off the ground.

The values Jeff has carried with him throughout his career and why maintaining great relationships has been his number one value.

You can find Jeff’s book, Creative Careers, Making a Living with Your Ideas in bookstores, Audible and on Amazon. Here’s the link on Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/Creative-Careers-Making-Living-Ideas/dp/B089669LNR/ref=sr_1_1?crid=122UH4BV7BJ2Wandkeywords=creative+careers+jeffandqid=1665507906andqu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjAyIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3Dandsprefix=creative+careers+jeff%2Caps%2C140andsr=8-1

You don’t need mystical visions, like my own story about the visions of me painting, for your life to take a magical turn. You just need to develop the skill of listening for the stories the silenced parts of you want to tell you.

Once you develop that skill of listening and start paying attention to what you hear, you’ll discover everything you need to know about how to make your life feel better. Listen to this episode to learn how to listen to the parts of you that you haven’t been hearing.

In this episode I share how being pickpocketed in Italy (See episode 70) catapulted me into a search for joy in my coaching business and art and led to me making some major decisions.

Joy and happiness are sometimes used interchangeably. I’d argue they’re not the same thing at all. I love this way of putting it: “Joy is in the heart. Happiness is in the face.” (from www.compassion.com.)

Tune in to learn what joy really is and why living joyfully is important.

This episode is about the feeling of bittersweet – sadness and happiness mixed up together. The stuff of life.

For me, bittersweet is a signal I’m fully experiencing life. I’m putting myself out there. I’m vulnerably connecting. I’m allowing all of life to be there and I’m allowing myself to experience all of it.

There are cracks in all our lives. We can pretend those cracks aren’t there. That our lives will always be smooth. But when we do that, we suffer in our resistance because we’re quieting an important part of us that wants to be heard.

An incredible beauty is revealed when we decide to open ourselves to all of life, including the cracks. When we commit to accepting our own troubled messiness. When we stop insisting that only our shiny parts be seen. As Leonard Cohen wrote in his song, Anthem:

Beauty calls to all of us in some way. It beckons us with its promise that things are alright. The world’s alright. The world’s magical. Beauty helps us fall into a feeling of awe, wonder and gratitude.

Life really sucks sometimes. A sudden moment of beauty can help you forget your problems, stop the loop of negative thinking that’s been keeping you stuck, create space for possibility and open portals of creativity. You can use beauty to connect with yourself, with others and your environment. Beauty isn’t trivial or less important than more serious things. It’s a worthy task to look for the beauty around you.

Tune into this episode to learn how to find beauty in the room where you’re sitting right now, in you, in the people around you, and in the things you create.

If you obsess about your goals and are constantly anxious about achieving them, your life isn’t as fun now as it could be. This episode offers you a way to stop striving and feel good now.

I got the idea for this episode as I walked around my 8 ½ acres and thought about how I’d intentionally developed a relationship of loving stewardship with it this summer. And how I’d used the same approach to develop a better relationship with my coaching business.

In this episode, I describe a process of loving stewardship you can use in any area of your life. This way of reframing things will help you love what you’re doing and, better, love yourself so much more.

Part of being human is having a brain that predisposes you to negative thinking. No matter how much self development you do, that’s always going to be the case. The negative chatter in your brain will still be there. That’s because your negativity is there for a reason – to help you survive. It also gives you the impetus to grow and evolve.

Which leads us to question the point of continuing your self development journey and hiring a coach, if you’re going to end up feeling shitty at the end of the day anyway.

This episode explains why you can still benefit enormously from hiring a coach and provides food for thought if you’ve never been coached before. I share a bit more information about the Magic Room Experience group coaching program, which starts next month.

In today’s episode, we tackle all the ways that pretending can hurt you, and why so many of us crave the ability to show up more authentically.

Pretending to be different than you are creates so much internal stress that it alters your body language and signals your deceit to the people around you. You feel “off” to both them and to you.

Pretending not only feels terrible, but it cuts off your ability to connect in deep and meaningful ways with other human beings and, even worse, with yourself.

Pretending constrains your choices and inhibits your creativity.

The irony is that we usually pretend when we believe this will create a better outcome. In fact, the opposite is true. Our best results typically occur when we show up truthfully and authentically as ourselves.