Welcome to a new year. It probably doesn’t feel much different than the last one and that’s ok. Let’s not put a ton of pressure there. You can have lots of new years, this is just one. I don’t suggest resolutions but I do love all things lists. So here is my list for 2021: my Top Five Reminders to Strengthen Your Practice in a New Year.
Welcome to a new year. It probably doesn’t feel much different than the last one and that’s ok. Let’s not put a ton of pressure there. You can have lots of new years, this is just one.
I don’t suggest resolutions but I do love all things lists. So here is my list for 2021: my Top Five Reminders to Strengthen Your Practice in a New Year.
Looking for strategies and support to build your projects and practice?Join Join Homework Club at www.mindyourpractice.com
Homework Club is for every creative person who wants deadlines and accountability! I mean, who doesn’t want that?
Each month you’ll get:
Just $12/month through January 6, 2021.
Get more advice on IG: @bethpickensconsulting
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Mind Your Practice is produced by artist and composer Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. You can find out more about her practice at carolynpennypackerriggs.com
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Our show image is by artist Jess Cuevas!
Hello artists. I’m Beth Pickens, the host of Mind Your Practice. Welcome to a new year. It probably doesn’t feel much different than the last one and that’s ok. Let’s not put a ton of pressure there. You can have lots of new years, this is just one.
I don’t suggest resolutions but I do love all things lists. So here is my list for 2021: my Top Five Reminders to Strengthen Your Practice in a New Year:
Your creative community can be your greatest resource. These are the people who can help you out of every problem your murky brain gets you into. When you feel like nobody understands, turn to another artist, they get it. Like all relationships, your friendships with other artists need attention and time. You need to tend to these relationships, expanding and deepening your intimacy with a growing group of other artists. Where do you start? Exactly where you are. Reach out to an artist in your life and ask them to catch up with you. Tell each other what’s going on for you creatively and where you want your projects to go this year.
The words lazy and perfect are signposts in my consultation practice. The words point me towards the underlying fear that is causing an artist to avoid their work. Here’s how I know this: no artist is lazy. It’s incongruent for an artist to believe they are lazy because artists are the only workers that work other jobs in order to work their job. When an artist tells me they are being lazy, I know to help them identify underlying fear.
Same thing when the word perfect pops up in a client’s language. I use this opportunity to dig under perfectionism for the fear that is blocking them. Perfection is an illusion that covers up fear. As long as we’re stuck in trying to make something perfect, we don’t have to accept reality. We can stay hidden, stay small, shrink away from sharing ourselves with the world.
This is simple but, like most simple things, it has a profound consequence. What you feed, what you give your attention to, focus on, provide with resources will grow. You have some choice in what you pour your thinking, time, love, and focus into. You can choose to make your creative practice something you feed.
There’s no easier way to get more time and focus for your practice than to abstain from all social media each week. I suggest a full 24 hour period but you can play with that according to your own habits and needs. Every single artist I know who takes purposeful breaks from social media regularly discovers more time and brain space for their project.
Don’t roll your eyes. And it’s ok if you cry a little while also thinking of Maybelline commercials. But you are totally worth investing in and so are your creative projects. This is your life and you absolutely deserve to spend more of it living out your gifts and talents and that includes your creative practice. Believing your artist self is worth the time and effort isn’t for other people only; it’s also for you.
Ok to recap, my Top Five Reminders to Strengthen Your Practice in a New Year are:
And by the way, when it comes to navigating your creative practice, you don’t have to do that alone. You can join my Homework Club which provides actual homework, audio extra credit, accountability pods, monthly workshops, and a community of other artists throughout the US and around the world. It’s only $12 a month if you join before January 6, then it goes up to $15 bucks. It’s also a great gift to give an artist in your life.
For more information, to sign up, and to learn about Homework Club, go to mindyourpractice.com. It’s really easy to sign up.