Hello beautiful people!
Let’s talk about our mental health.
Not news: We’re sensitive critters, we artists. It’s just how we’re built. Part of the reason we are — through our art — capable of helping those who don’t have the means of dealing with how they’re feeling is precisely because we’re “finely wired” when it comes to our emotional accessibility.
Our emotions are powerful tools, yet we turn them on ourselves as weapons a great deal more than is healthy.
Give no boost to the fleeting thought that is anything negative about yourself, your chances in the business, your relationships, your motivation — these thoughts only stick around as long as we feed them. So just don’t. They’ll go away. They’ll pass through as quickly as the emotion we feel over having to replace batteries in the TV remote. Meh. NBD.
There’s no question that there’s an emotional nimbleness required of artists.
We must be vulnerable so that we can freely access our emotions, yet hard-shelled enough to deal with the criticism, micro rejection, and exhaustion of pursuing this career.
We must care enough about a role to prepare with gusto and have confidence in the product we’re offering up, but care so little that it’s easy to forget we were on avail, had a pin in us, or booked the gig before the money fell out or they cut the role.
We must be both creative and business-minded and know when to switch from one to the other, as creatives scare the bejeezus out of suits, but people who don’t know how to negotiate because they’re so busy dreaming get eaten alive in this business.
We must know how to spin the projects we have coming up without stealing focus from the one we’re promoting right now, our enthusiasm for the latter having been at its peak months or years before we’re being asked to give good mic on the red carpet.
We must be encouraged by love and adoration from the fanbase we’ve worked so hard to build, but not so tied up in whether anyone gives a crap about what we’re doing that we give a crap about the hate some will spew, the more high-profile we become. (Day 3)
We must be able to hear endless advice about “how this works” and both take the advice that will help us and throw away the advice that doesn’t apply, wouldn’t help, or simply isn’t right for us at this tier at this time.
Crazymaking unless we’ve built a muscle for emotional nimbleness. Luckily, as artists, that’s easy to do. It starts with turning our attention to — you guessed it — labeling with accuracy.
Today’s work: Start building the muscle for labeling where you’re “broken” followed by immediately identifying how that’s okay. Yes, this is an extension of the foundational work we did in Day 4, so if you need to revisit your flips, please do that now.
You’ll notice I put “broken” in quotation marks because even the act of labeling ourselves as broken puts us in a lower state than our best… and remember, we’re working to behave as if we’re the best in the world at what we do (Day 15) as often as possible. If we’ve gotten at all sloppy in this thinking in recent days, it’s time to sit up straight about it all.
Part of the way *I* become okay with my “brokenness” is by turning my focus to the population I’m here to serve. When we consider not just how we want to feel but how we want others to feel thanks to our influence in their lives, the ways in which we are relatable — the common wounds or damage we share — become that quiet outreach we can provide when someone feels alone in the world. Our “brokenness” becomes a lighthouse for someone else.
’til tomorrow… stay ninja!
