Monthly Archives: December 2014

December 26, 2014 · 3:05 pm

A Vision Of What At Last You Could Be

frosty-472871_640Creative people in the arts and every other field are in the habit of reflecting a great deal on their goals, their success in reaching them, and the lessons they’ve learned from efforts that didn’t work out. They continually analyze what they do well and what they do not do well, and then exploit their strengths as far as they can and work to develop themselves in areas where they’re not as gifted.

And they have a particular way of dealing with apparent failures or defeats: they treat them as prods to even greater achievements and opportunities to learn lessons that are of value to their careers. People who have achieved a high level of excellence have not done so by accident and are not satisfied to reach merely an acceptable level of performance, but have much higher ambitions.

Possible Selves/Visions of the Future.

When you say “I’m a good person;” “I’m an ideal parent;” “I’m a poor public speaker;” “I’m very lazy” your self-concept is speaking. Your self-concept is the view you hold of yourself, your opinion of the kind of person you are and are not at the present time. The current self is the one we’re most familiar with. But we have other selves too, such as the selves we could be in the future. Those are our Possible Selves. One type of possible self is the ideal you’d very much like to become—a famous athlete or painter or writer, for example. There are also other selves you could become, as well as those you’re afraid of or dread becoming.

The possible selves you may hope for may include the happy self, the creative self, the wealthy self, the physically fit self, and the successful self. The dreaded possible selves could be the lonely self, the incompetent self, the drug addict self, the unhappily married self, the bag lady self. There is your good self that you’re proud of, and the bad or the guilty one that you’re ashamed of and prefer never to think or talk to anyone about.

A vision of the future and a possible self guided your decisions to choose to go to college and to take one job rather than another. A young girl sees a painting in a museum that moves her and decides on the spot on a possible self and a vision of the future: she will become a painter. She will go to art school and study.

When we think of possible selves and visions of the future that are positive and appealing we’re strong with hope. We’re liberated and set free because we realize that the present is not unchangeable. We never have to be a self we don’t wish to be, but can create a different self, a different future.

You’re free at every moment to create any variety of possible selves and visions of the future. Your life may not be going well—may be going all wrong in every way–but your positive possible future holds the promise of better days. But negative visions of the future make us unhappy and afraid. They can imprison us because they may cause hopelessness—the would-be dancer who thinks, “Day after day I don’t make progress. Nothing clicks. It’s probably foolish of me to think I could be a ballerina.”

The Impact of Possible Selves On Our Lives

ballet-542170_640Possible selves form the basis for personal growth and change. It becomes clearer to you every passing day that the main cause of personal success isn’t something that comes like a generous gift from the outside, but is your own conception of yourself and the development of your capabilities, that all real growth comes from within.

A clear view of what we could become sets our motivation in motion. No two ways about it: we must have a vision of the future to be committed to the goals we’ll need to reach the future we hope for. Day-dream, because it’s often in daydreams that our visions of the future are born.

When I was in the third grade the teacher read to the class a theme I’d written in which I wrote that playing football I was tackled and “fell to the ground like a blob of jelly coming out of a jar” and the teacher said “That is poetic language. That is a simile. David has made a simile.” Walking home after school, I decided that if I became a writer I’d get to write similes the rest of my life. Everything after that was aimed in that direction. That was my possible self that became my actual self.

In my freshman year of high school I made the track team as a middle-distance runner. One day I was getting dressed in the locker room. A senior middle distance runner—the reigning Chicago city champ –sat down beside me on the bench. That surprised me because we’d never spoken before. He said, “I’ve been watching you. You’re very good. You have more potential than you probably realize, but you’re very shy and I can see you don’t have confidence. You don’t have a conception of what you could be. Pick up your head, be strong, and say to yourself over and over, ‘I could be the best. I could be the fastest runner in the city.’ Work hard.” It meant so much to me that he cared and had taken the time to share that with me, and I took it to heart. So now I had a new ambition, a new vision of the future that right then I vowed to devote myself to, and a new possible self, a new identity that I would become. I began to study innovative training methods and to apply myself and worked very hard.

The First Step

berries-302341_640A vision of the future of yourself as a highly successful artist or athlete or effective business person self is the first step in achieving that future. It will not only guide your decisions, but will immediately set planning in motion. It will help you focus on goals, and keep you from needless distractions.

What if right now you were to forget about the past, wipe the slate clean of failures and false starts, and start fresh, setting the goal of becoming as successful an artist, writer, sales woman or whatever as you could possibly be—to buckle down? Is that goal appealing, or don’t you much care? How would you go about achieving that goal? What would you do? Where would you start? Where would the goal take you? What would your life be like were you to achieve that goal? What would be the link between the actions you would engage in now at the present time—and in the next six months, and the next year and years beyond that– and the attainment of the future you envision?

Set short-term and long-term goals and reach them, one after another, overcoming impediments as they appear. You must have positive images of the person you’re aiming to become and negative images of the person you want to avoid becoming. Other people can serve as models—pro and con–and so can your past.

Think of your prior successes and of what steps were needed for you to succeed then and repeat the same again. Past success is the most powerful and direct basis for judging if you will succeed in achieving a new goal. If you believe you have the ability—the skills, motivation, and know-how–to achieve what you want to achieve and have done so in the past, you will try to achieve it. If you feel that way, you’ll be confident and will not likely to be haunted by self-doubt, possibly a person’s main internal obstacle. You’ll have high expectations of future success. You’ll think about past failures as useful lessons.

Share your vision with other people: talk about it; be confident. But stating an ideal possible self isn’t enough to produce sustained effort and changes in behavior. For that to occur, your goal needs to be linked with specific strategies, concrete behaviors such as an artist working with an excellent and more experienced artist, increasing your knowledge of your field, sticking firmly to a regular work schedule, and developing the skills essential to your work. Strategies help to focus on goals while also anticipating and planning how you’ll handle setbacks by developing plans of action and contingency plans. Most successful people in every field point to strategies as the main cause of their success.

Some of your goals—the important ones—won’t be easy. You’ll have to acquire new capabilities. A defeat, setback, or loss or lapse of commitment can have a devastating effect on a possible self, so be prepared. An agent’s cruel reply to an inexperienced writer’s submission can destroy the writer’s possible author self—she may quit– or a businessman’s blunder resulting in the loss of a major contract, or a field goal kicker missing the kick that would have won the game.

When you’re discouraged the hoped-for self is replaced by a weakened, vulnerable one. But even the smallest encouragement has the effect of bolstering your spirits. Being resilient and accepting setbacks as an unavoidable part of work life that even the greatest in any field can’t avoid is essential for maintaining a firm, unshakeable motivation.

It may seem illogical to think of anything negative and seem better to block all negatives out and think only of positive possibilities. But a balanced view—thinking of both positive and negative possibilities–has been shown to improve focus and to lead to important self-improvements and good results. The fear of not succeeding drives many people to unexpected success.

Having both positive and negative images in mind serves as a carrot and a stick both, reminding you of what glorious things may happen if you stay on track, as well as what may happen if you lose your commitment and fail to follow-through effective strategies: if you don’t develop your skills to a high level you will not improve.

Figuring out how you’ll become your desired self and avoid becoming your undesired self can lead to tremendous, life-changing results. Action is a necessity.

© 2014 David J. Rogers

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on the following link:

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December 17, 2014 · 5:59 pm

Tidy, Productive Lives and Messy, Creative Lives

dandelion-6296_640Swedes use the term “Dandelion Children” to describe children who thrive in any kind of environment under any conditions in the same way dandelions thrive regardless of soil, drought, sun, or rain. This is a post about dandelion children who grow up to be remarkable.

Tidy, Productive Lives

“The vast majority of individuals whose adult lives have been unusually creative or productive, or who have been unusually capable within various fields of expertise, have been people whose early years have been stimulating ones, characterized by plenty of opportunities to learn and plenty of guidance and encouragement, of one or both parents.” (Michael J.A Howe, The Psychology of High Abilities)

The influential study described in Developing Talent in Young People laid out a process that was generally followed in homes of people who were studied. The parents strongly encouraged development of the children’s talent in a particular area in preference to others, went to extreme lengths to help the child to do well, were always willing to devote their time and energy to the children–playing games, reading to them, or teaching them in one way or another. Parents showed interest in their children’s activities and encouraged them to do their best. Not one of the children reached their potential without strong support and training. Parents would move heaven and earth to give their children rich educational opportunities, finding for them the best teachers and advisors, sparing no expense.

Those paragraphs—those ideas, those luxuries, usually of middle or upper middle-class, highly-educated affluent parents and their privileged children–are the kind psychologists love to write about neat and tidy, ideal upbringings. But even as you read them you’re thinking:

“Who are they talking about? They’re certainly not talking about me!”

Messy, Creative Lives

There’s an alternative point of view:

“When you read the lives of various great men (and women)-of all great men, perhaps, if the account is truthful–you will notice that the conditions of their childhood, their education, or their profession did not predispose them to what they ultimately accomplished. It is not because of their education, it is often in spite of it that they were able to develop. This man grew up without books; that man had to study secretly. It makes you wonder what the word ‘advantages’ really means, what parents mean when they say they want their children to have all the advantages they themselves did not have…Is not the lack of something often more helpful? For the lack of an external thing arouses an inner impulse that replaces it; the ‘I,’ the individual’s native gift is substituted…So you need never pity people who complain that they lack this or that, provided they have pledged themselves to reach their goal.” (Jean Guitton, A Student’s Guide to Intellectual Work)

Popular American author William Saroyan wrote, “I must make it known that I do not believe it is required of art, science, religion, philosophy or family to assure every man born into this life, a secure childhood, in which a child knows only love and harmony…The supplying of such a childhood to a child… may not even be desirable. It may create a nonentity.” Playwright/novelist Gore Vidal wrote, “The protective love of two devoted parents can absolutely destroy an artist.” Creative attainment does not depend on coming from an intact family.

Cradles of Eminence

In a biographical survey of the family backgrounds of 400 eminent people of the twentieth century that included novelists, poets, actors, musicians, opera singers, composers, movie directors, painters, playwrights, dancers, and architects, 85 % had come from troubled homes with very little attachment, warmth, affection, or closeness.

American novelist Willa Cather and her mother arranged their lives so that their contacts with each other were minimal and Willa and her brother were left alone. In Cradles of Eminence the authors who conducted the survey say, “Contentment and creativity do not ordinarily go hand in hand in the homes that cradle eminence.” As children 75% were troubled by a variety of problems such as poverty, and “by rejecting, over-possessive, estranged, or dominating parents; by financial ups and downs; by physical handicaps; or by parental dissatisfaction over the children’s school failures or vocational choice.”

ernest-hemingway-401493_640The great majority of writers of fiction or drama, and a number of poets, came from families where there were tense conflicts between the parents. Sixty percent were dissatisfied with school. Nobel Prize winning author Ernest Hemingway grew up in a dysfunctional home and was convinced his mother’s constant badgering of his father led to his father’s to suicide.

Prolific 19th century English novelist Anthony Trollope achieved fame, fortune, and popularity, and knew many of the rich and the accomplished of his era. But in school he “suffered horribly! I could make no stand against it. I had no friend to whom I could pour out my sorrows. I was big, and awkward, and ugly. How well I recall all the agonies of my young heart: how I considered whether I should always be alone; whether I could not find my way up to the top of that college tower, and from thence put an end to everything…Something of the disgrace of my school-days has clung to me all though life….I feel convinced in my mind that I have been flogged oftener than any human being alive…These were twelve years of tuition in which I do not remember that I even knew a lesson!”

As twelve year old celebrated English novelist Charles Dickens suffered in poverty and was forced to live alone, away from his family, while working many hours a day in a rat-infested factory pasting labels on pots while his father rotted in debtor’s prison. When his father was released, Charles’ mother wanted her son to stay on at that miserable factory. Later Dickens wrote: “I never afterwards forgot, I shall never forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back…Even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget in my dream that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man; and I wander desolately back to that time in my life.”

Cradles Of Eminence concludes that contributions to the arts and other fields are likely to be made by the person whose childhood was not trouble-free and who was not an all-round good student, and whose parents were a problem to themselves and the child. In many autobiographies of eminent artists there are frequent references to the positive motivating effects adverse circumstances had on them.

jazz-63212_640Famous jazz musician Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong’s father deserted the family, and his mother was “out on the town.” Louis was committed to an institution for delinquent boys where he learned to play musical instruments and became a band leader. He said, “All in all I am very proud of the days I spent at the Colored Waifs Home for Boys.”

Stephen Crane, Eugene O’Neill, William Faulkner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald were just a few writers of many artists who failed in college. Many, like Hemingway, had no interest at all in going to a college. Pablo Picasso failed at elementary school because he refused to do anything other than paint. Even as a child of nine he would duck out of class and wander the streets of Madrid, painting and sketching.

Psychologist E. Paul Torrance found that 70% of the children who rated high in creativity would not be selected to be members of a special class for intellectually gifted children. High IQ students are likely to prefer conventional occupations–doctor, lawyer, and engineer. Highly creative students find unconventional careers like writer more appealing. Few of the subjects in Lewis Terman’s high IQ study—the “Genius Study”– went on to excel in the fine arts, music, and literature. The group produced many successful people, but not one creative artist.

Boys and girls who’ll become famous are not often ‘all around” competent, conforming students. Creative people are not distinguished by high grades at school. Fathers who were abject failures are common in the lives of great artists and in the lives of eminent people in almost all fields. Writers and actors lived in particularly turbulent homes.

“Ironically the child that grows up with many privileges may have much less opportunity for her or his creativity than the child growing up in the slums. If everything is done for the child, and the child has little opportunity to show initiative, then whatever latent potentials there are for creative work may be suppressed because there is no need to develop these potentials.” Robert J. Sternberg and James C. Kaufman, “Constraints on Creativity.”

I’m betting that the majority of people reading this post, many of them artists, didn’t follow the psychologist’s “tidy” path to their current creative lives, but became successful in spite of—or because of–a “messy” childhood.

© 2014 David J. Rogers

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on the following link:

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Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

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December 10, 2014 · 5:14 pm

Decisive Choices

“We have to learn to pay close attention to our lives right now, not just tomorrow or next week or next year–or even in an hour.”

Moments of Decisive Choice

cliffsDuring the Nazi occupation of Europe there were rescuers and bystanders. The majority were bystanders. They stood by. Rescuers helped people who were being hunted. They hid them; they fed them; they helped them get away.

Bystanders claimed they had no choice because the penalty for harboring fugitives was death. Rescuers said they had no choice but to risk death because they were doing the right thing. But each did have a choice. The rescuers could have said, “I won’t help,” and the bystanders could have said, “I will.” They each made a decisive choice.

We make decisive choices all our lives. At one time or another we’ve chosen to be brave or cowardly, to be happy or not, to fall in love or not, to shirk our responsibilities or live up to them. You make a decisive choice to take a risk to start a new career, to face up to a serious problem, to end something or start something, or to get yourself out of a miserable predicament.

We fell in love with freedom as children and have been trying all of our adult lives to have more of it. During moments of decisive choice you’re as free as you’ll ever be. You come to an impasse, then say, “I’ve had enough of this routine, of this style of life, of these habits, of thinking the same old shop-worn thoughts, of this place, of these people. It’s time to change.” You’re bold. You declare yourself: “This is what I believe and this is what I’ll do.” The happiest people in the world are the ones that have made up their mind. Then you set sail; you catch the wind.

Moments of No Choice

Just as there are moments when you make a decisive choice, there are moments when you should make a decisive choice, but don’t. Moments of no choice are moments when you would be happiest leading one kind of life or another, but lazily or fearfully you follow the course already set.

You would think that being in a bad situation, people would want to find a way out. Lizzie would start a better life as soon as she leaves Ted, and she knows that. No one has to tell her Ted is no good for her; that her life is being ruined. But months pass and she makes no choice. Lizzie never leaves him and her life stays the same. People look at her and say, “What a shame. What a wasted life.”

Burt makes no choice, permitting his loneliness to continue, coming home from work, switching on the light, and as he does every other night sits down on the edge of the bed to wonder wearily what the rest of the world is doing. Many people moan about their troubles, but do nothing to get rid of them.

Have you noticed how many people who make no choice are leading lives that are beneath them? How many can’t seem to imagine a better life? How many doubt themselves and lack confidence?

 Choice-Point Living

sunrise-165094_640We have the freedom at any point to freeze the action of our lives, take a step back, and decide to continue as we are or to start out in a more promising direction. At any moment you’re at liberty to:

1. Stop the action, reflect, and make an honest appraisal of your life as it stands. Is it progressing the way you want?

  1. Will you continue it as it is, or will you change its direction? You don’t have to wait until next week or next month, or until you feel completely up to it. Right now as you read this you can stop the action, look up from the screen, and ask, “Do I really want to continue my life as is, or should I change it?”
  1. Plan the changes you’ll make. Set goals because if you have goals clearly in mind you will be motivated to achieve them, be more persistent in pursuing them, more self-confident, better able to overcome obstacles, and more successful.
  1. Take decisive action and do what you’ve decided to do.

That’s intentional Choice Point Living–purposely stopping, appraising, deciding, and acting. It may start when you find yourself thinking, “Everything is fine—I’m leading a good life and have so much to be content with. But yet, yet, I can actually feel in my gut, feel physically, that something isn’t right, something is seriously wrong somewhere, and something should be done.”

 Points of No Return/No Retreat Societies

In your life there have been and will be again points of no return, periods of total commitment. Now you’re fully mobilized for action. There is no longer any other choice to be made, no “should I do this or should I do that?” or “Should I wait?” There’s no stopping you from the direction you’ve consciously chosen. Now there is no time for second thoughts. Everything is clear to you. Everything is perfect. You can remember some of your points of no return and how glorious you felt making up your mind and committing yourself.

Among Native American warriors there were “no retreat societies.” These warriors declared themselves. They were in the fight to the finish, and there was no going back, no retreating. Your points of no return have been like that. They’ve been some of the happiest times of your life. Once you were decided you were in it straight to the end.

What points of no return do you remember best?

Is it time for another?

The Single Purpose of This Present Moment

japanese-cherry-trees-324175_640We’re accustomed to thinking of broad vistas–of where we will stand in life and how well we will be doing in six months or five years or ten or twenty. We neglect to notice how uncertain life is and how time is racing, how our lives once gone are gone forever. We’re no different than cherry blossoms that don’t last long in the wind that blows them from the tree. All we remember is how beautiful they were. Our lives are five minutes long.

We have to learn to pay close attention to our lives right now, not just tomorrow or next week or next year–or even in an hour. Why concern yourself with how you’ll feel a day from now, or in a minute, or what may happen, when far more important is what needs to be done right now, this present moment.

Gather your strength, or courage, or defiance into a decisive choice. Come to life.

 

Moments of Decisive Choice—Strength, Freedom

Moments of No Choice—Lack of Confidence, No Change

Choice Point Living—Conscious Change, New Goals, Setting Sail

Points of No Return—Total Commitment, Strength

No Retreat Societies—No Going Back, Happiness

The Single Purpose of This Present Moment—Awareness, Confidence, Focus

 

© 2014 David J. Rogers

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on the following link:

www.mentorcoach.com/rogershttp://www.mentorcoach.com/positive-psychology-coaching/interviews/interview-david-j-rogers/

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December 2, 2014 · 5:39 pm

Do You Dance For Me Or Yourself?

Artists’ Intensity, Obsessions, and Will

yoga-366093_640To say that artistic work is often difficult and artists must be highly motivated if they are to produce it is to say the surface of the sun is quite hot. The artist must not only have that motivation, but must also sustain it, often over a long period of many years. Among the personal qualities that cause motivation that is strong are not luxuries but virtual necessities for any artist: passion, restlessness, intensity, obsessiveness, will, and persistence. It’s not hard at all to look at an artist and say, “That man (or woman) is driven.”

French author Gustave Flaubert called his motivation rage: “Sometimes I don’t understand why my arms don’t drop from my body with fatigue, why my brains don’t melt away. I am leading a stern existence, stripped of all external pleasure, and am sustained only by a kind of permanent rage, which sometimes makes me weep tears of impotence but which never abates.”

“While the daily life of every [ballet] dancer is a full-time struggle against fatigue, strain, natural physical limitations and those due to injuries (which are inevitable), dance itself is an enactment of an energy which must seem, in all respects, untrammeled, effortless, at every moment fully mastered.” The dancer’s performance smile is “a categorical denial of what he or she is actually experiencing–for there is some discomfort, and often pain, in every major stint of performing [–and we might add, practicing]. (Susan Sontag. American writer, teacher, and film-maker)

But artists seem to develop tremendous recuperative powers and verge on the inexhaustible. Flaubert went back for more every day and dancers continue to smile while in pain. Picasso, who worked incessantly from childhood and produced a quarter million works, claimed never to have felt tired, never to have felt the slightest fatigue. He said, “When I work I leave my body outside the door.”

 If There Is One Thing Famous Artists Will Tell You

Freud thought that artists are actually seeking wealth and power, but being unable to secure them directly find satisfaction in creative activities. Whether that is true or it isn’t, if there is one thing famous artists will tell you it is that you work best and are most powerfully motivated to create and will work long, often tedious, hours and endure a great deal and surmount even major obstacles when you’re not thinking of anyone’s liking but your own.

It may take years to come to that conclusion, but come to it many do. “I alone here, on my inch of earth, paint this thing for my own sole joy, and according to my own sole mind. So I should paint it, if no other human being existed but myself. Let who will get good or ill from this–I am not concerned therewith. Thus I must do it, for thus I see it, and thus I like it, woe be to me if I paint as other people see or like.”(Art Critic John Ruskin)

At the time American novelist William Faulkner’s picture appeared on the cover of Time magazine he couldn’t afford to pay his electric bill. As soon as he resigned himself to the fact that his unique vision and natural complex and rhetorical style and particular subject matter were not those of a commercially-popular author, he immediately entered a period of sustained creative energy that produced in quick succession one masterpiece after another. Making the decisions not to seek fame or wealth, he embarked on a path that would lead ironically to eventual world fame, financial security, and celebrity, culminating in the Nobel Prize.

He turned inward and decided to write for himself: “One day I seemed to shut a door between me and all publishers. I said to myself, ‘Now I can write.’“ He started working on what would be the innovative The Sound and the Fury–“thinking of books, publication, only in the sense in saying to myself, I wont [sic] have to worry about publishers liking or not liking this at all.”

The Awareness of Being Judged

When an artist is hard at work, work is center stage and doing it as skillfully as possible and enjoying it for its own sake are the strongest driving forces. The standard against which artists measure themselves is making use of their capabilities to the fullest each time they set to work—a notion of personal perfection, as in ballet, perfect expression and perfect technique.

But from time to time the thought that the work is going to be judged by someone else enters the artist’s mind. When thinking that a critic, an editor, an agent, a reviewer, a potential buyer, an audience will soon be evaluating the work, for most artists, even the best and most highly regarded, the self-conscious nervousness begins. Prolific nineteenth century English novelist Anthony Trollope said that an author should let criticism fall on him as “dew or hail from heaven,” and accept it as fate. But even the most renowned artists worry about the reception their work will receive and cannot help but to bear that in mind during the creative process.

Psychologist Teresa M. Amabile staked her whole reputation on proving that creative solutions to problems occur more frequently when people engage in the activity for the sheer pleasure it offers, and less frequently when their creativity is being judged. When we are not being evaluated, our creativity is liberated and free, but is inhibited when we are.  Amabile tested a wide range of subjects. No matter what the reward was or when it was given, if the subjects thought they were working for external remuneration, they became less creative. But when they were playing, they were creative. A playful approach to the task increases the likelihood of producing creative results.

Another experiment showed that even the hint that an external reward was riding on performance was sufficient to make the subject lose interest. The same happens to chimps. Given paint and canvas chimpanzees become so absorbed in painting that they show little interest in sex or food. But if the chimps are extrinsically rewarded for their painting, the quantity and quality of their painting declines. They do only well enough to get the reward. Chimps, like many humans, are more likely to be creative when no expectations of external reward are contingent on their performance.  Then it’s fun. But even  thinking about external rewards reduces creativity among many people.

The Thought of Failing

With every performance an actor, violinist, singer, or dancer gives, and every work a painter, writer, or composer begins, the slate is wiped clean. Past successes mean nothing, and there is a new opportunity to please other people, true, but also the possibility of disappointing them and having to suffer the devastating thought, “I failed,” and possibly the loss of reputation and income. More than one performer has vomited before going on, fearing the unfavorable opinion of the people filling the theater and critics out there jotting notes on their pads.

All artists go through fallow periods when success seems unattainable. Hemingway’s career consisted of alternating decades of critical success and failure. I have a friend who won a prestigious national literary award, but couldn’t find a single publisher who would publish his next book.

 Artists Deprived of Success

Deprived of favorable outward success and validation, some artists experience hopelessness and simply give up. But others continue to work at their craft without external feedback on the strong basis of their self-confidence or unflagging hope or sheer love of their art. (Creativity is addictive.) Jack London received 600 rejection letters before selling his first story. But within two years of that he was one of the most famous writers in the world. 85% of Equity (union) actors are unemployed at any one time, but survive as best they can, and refuse to give up their art.

An ideal world for artists would be one in which the work sold itself. Van Gogh wrote, “My opinion is that the best thing would be to work on till art lovers feel drawn toward it (his work) of their own accord, instead of having to praise or explain it.” I can hardly think of anyone who doesn’t believe their art would be better quality if they didn’t have to worry about making it saleable—possibly producing a more extreme, more original, more daring, and more outrageous art out of the commercial mainstream that is less compromised and truer to the artist’s individuality.

Artists would prefer not to be dependent on the opinion of others at all, and must decide, as you must, whose liking their art is for; if they dance for me or themselves.

© 2014 David J. Rogers

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on the following link:

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