Artists

The Great Discourager

The Great Discourager

Garth Beyer

Better Than You

Here’s the sitch when it comes to going down the path of your passion: you’re not the only one, and nearly all the others down the same path are much, much better than you.

Want to be a beer writer? There are so many others better than you, more experienced. Steve Hindy, Maytag, Heather Vandenengel, Robin Shepard, this list could run a thousand.

Want to be a graphic designer for fortune 500 companies? The slots are already filled by someone bigger, taller, stronger, faster, and with a better stretched and exercised imagination than you.

Even something extremely specific, like a crêpe artist. There’s someone already more artistic with crepes who others will choose over you.

Unless.

Unless you tell a better story. Your story is the leverage you can have over someone more excelled than you. Your story is how you not only get a bite out of the stranger pool, but you turn the strangers into friends. Your story is your competitive advantage.

The decision you need to realize you’re making when you start following your heart and putting your passion to practice is that there will always be someone better than you, more skilled, more talented. You can’t let that be the great discourager.

The world can never have too many stories nor too many artists.

 

Stay Positive & Those Who You Feel Discouraged Be Can Be The Most Encouraging

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Start Your Way

Start Your Way

Garth Beyer

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I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts lately. One in particular Debbie Millman’s. It seems every interviewee, every professional creative, every communicator began with one weird thing.

Think of a sculpture made from all the staples in wooden posts within a city. Imagine fake moss saran wrapped on a rock and sold. Consider a ridiculous feat. It can even be something that anyone can do, but no one is willing to commit to (basically half the art pieces in an art museum).

Once you become a success, people will want to hear your story. They will ask you how you started or where you started or when you knew exactly what you wanted to do with your career.

You have an opportunity when starting on the path to your own success to start in a remarkable, more specifically, weird, way.

If your serious about becoming successful, then you need to be the opposite about starting down that path. You never heard a successful person’s story start out “Well, I planned for four years figuring out everything I needed to do to get here and I worked my way very slowly here, pleasing everyone I could and trying to appeal to the masses and doing what everyone told me to blah blah blah.”

No.

You hear about people doing something crazy and weird and something worth talking about.

 

Stay Positive & The Most Important Part Of Any Story Is The Opening Paragraph

(What’s Yours?)

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Artists Without An Audience

Garth Beyer

I came across Shoshana Fanizza’s blog earlier today. In one of her recent posts, she mentions that she “went to a concert last night, a chamber music concert with Glass, Verdi and Wagner.  It was a great mix of new and old pieces that are rarely performed.” She goes on, ” I looked around, and GenX me was the youngest one there!  There were no millennials, except onstage.”

Confusingly, that’s both surprising and not. Not surprising because, it’s true, millennials have no time to be attending performances because they are out striving to gather an audience of their own. It’s a bittersweet tragedy, really.

Fanizza writes, “I remember asking a younger performer who was in town if he ever was able to be an audience member.  He replied that he almost never had the time.”

I say it’s a tragedy for the same reason why it’s surprising to me. How can you know what an audience feels at an orchestra, how they interact with the composers and each other, how they listen to the music, if you’ve never been an audience member?

This is, more or less, a shout out to all the artists out there: you can’t be a successful businessperson without having ever been on the other side of a contract, you can’t be a composer if you’ve never sat in the audience of another composer, you can’t be a phenomenal writer if you’ve never read a book, and you will never truly connect with an audience member without first being one.

Consider being part of an audience like visiting family. At times, it may drive you crazy and you may other priorities and work to do, but you still visit, because, in the end, it’s in everyone’s best interest.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Get Me Started On Standing Ovations

Garth E. Beyer

Morning Stream Of Awesome Better Than Coffee

Garth Beyer

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Checking Facebook when you first wake up can be a good thing. I’ve read articles that suggest you shouldn’t check your phone right away (FB,email, texts,etc,.), that you should wake up on your own schedule, enjoy life a bit, and deal with all the work that your phone is blinking at you at a later time. But then, ignoring these suggestions, this morning I read the following on Facebook,

“All artists should be treated with respect I always see many people getting put down at doing what they love and lose confidence to making music,making art, dancing , and whatever you do, keep your head up and chase your dreams, because every person out there has the capability to do anything in life!”

This is as livening as a cup of coffee, if not more.

Those suggesting you don’t check your phone right away are half right. I am all for staying unplugged a couple of mornings a week to take a walk down to the lake or do a workout without any distractions, but what people fail to recognize is our need to evaluate what calls our attention in the morning.

There are negative consequences to checking our phone as soon as we wake up when we read a Facebook feed filled with complaints, an RSS feed of the days most negative news, our work email instead of our personal email.

Give yourself a morning stream of awesome on your phone and I don’t see a problem with checking it before we all get out of bed.

 

Stay Positive & Combine It With Coffee, You’ll Be Set To Go All Day

Garth E. Beyer

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Repeating Levels

Garth Beyer

They say life is a game, so why not continue with the analogy?

Life is a game that many people just repeat levels. They do the same work (their best) at different locations. Becoming a professional has been entwined with producing the same amount of value across the board.

Ruckus makers, the artists, those who make the most out of life, though, don’t repeat levels. They just so happen to complete each level in a different way. No, maybe it’s not their “best” work. No, maybe they took too big of a risk. And, yes, maybe – just maybe – they failed.

Beauty of it though, is you just pick yourself up and try a different way.

There’s no “replay” button, but there is always a “restart.”

 

Stay Positive & Most Artists, Though, Never Have The Need To Press It

Garth E. Beyer

New Years. New Goals. I Don’t Think So.

Garth Beyer

Start now.

There are millions of people around the world, right now, that are thinking about the new years resolutions they will write for themselves at the end of December. Are you one of them? Are you thinking how you are going to finish that book next year, ship that art piece next year, finish your project next year, make a change in your life next year? There are 744 hours left of this year. Have you any clue how much you can do with 744 hours? That new years resolution list you have been thinking about? Make it now.

Then do it before the end of this year.

“The great majority of artists are throwing themselves in with life-preservers around their necks, and more often than not it is the life-preserver which sinks them. Nobody can drown in the ocean of reality who voluntarily gives himself up to the experience.” Henry Miller

Quit holding on to things and ship them. Ship yourself. Strive to make next year a fresh slate. Write a new book next year, build a new non-profit next year, but for right now, finish what you started. Create a blog, finish (not perfectly) all of your next year goals this year, and throw them on your blog. Get them out there. Start again. This next year, is about showing that you can follow through with good ideas and you have so many more on the way that they can’t wait.

By the way, have you ever thought that if you can hold back from sharing something of yours with the world, that it just may not be worth sharing. Or are you telling me that you have held out on something I’ve wanted for more than a year?

The next 744 hours are about delivering everything you thought would be your one-hit-wonder, your  zipline to stardom. You’re better than that, the world (and myself) want more from you than one perfect project that’ll be old news in a week.

Make that new years resolution list now.

Complete it by new years.

 

Stay Positive & Start New

Garth E. Beyer

The Moment Your Work Becomes Easy

Garth Beyer

It means that you are playing it safe, that you have gotten comfortable.

Yes, you can be painting 25 portraits a week, writing 11 hours a day, starting a new business every 13 months and that is A LOT to do. But if it’s easy, if it has become habit, a routine that you know you have to do and you do it half-consciously, then it loses its meaning.

The saying goes that if you aren’t getting better, you are getting worse. There are millions of artists, writers and entrepreneurs painting one more portrait than you, writing for one more hour than you, and starting one more business than you. The experience they get from doing just a bit more trumps you considerably. 

By being “trumped”, I mean, you’re fired and they’re hired. All because you quit pushing yourself and increasing the difficulty level.

— I’ve written every day, typically winding up publishing what I write. I also have a steady writing/editing job. On the side, I write in every category of writing words will stay and force the words where they wont stay just for experience. But it’s gotten easy. It’s natural for me to type anywhere from 300 – 3,000 words a day whether they are worth a damn or not. I think I may be standing still. —

And when that happens, when you stand still, when it becomes easy, there are two choices: settle a stay comfortable or do more, work harder, experience extra, invite challenges, and not go one mile further but aim for 10, 20, 30 miles ahead.

By the way, if you aren’t willing to run/paint/write/create/etc. more than you are now, drop out and find what will never be easy for you. Being comfortable and having your routine means that you are standing still.

And if you click the link, you know what I say: People die standing still.

 

Stay Positive & Aggrandize Your Passion

Garth E. Beyer