Creating Good Habits

Sometimes people have things that cause them to do the same thing over and over again.  Invisible scripts.  Inherent trait X.  Habits.   Whatever you want to call it, we all have them, both good or bad.  Sometimes our bad habits get in the way of being awesome, and you may stop and think "Ugh, I wish I didn't always do X."  Whether "X" is spending too much time reading celebrity gossip, or constantly checking your email instead of working, how do we break them?

First off, we have to understand why are habits so hard to break.  Habits are really neurological pathways that have been reinforced over years and years of doing them.  It's no wonder that they come so naturally to us.  They are literally wired inside our brains.  In fact, the lame part is that once we have a habit, the pathway in our brain never goes away.  So the downside is that if you have a habit of always criticizing your art as soon as you're done with it, no matter how much work you do to change that, it'll always be there, no matter what.

However, there is good news.  We can create new, positive habits that will reinforce what you want to do.  Besides, making things habitual is easier in the long run, than constantly fighting your current bad habits.

How to create positive habits?  It's about designing systems that allow you to create the habits you want through a reward system.  We need as much help as we can get when trying to replace old habits with new ones, so by creating an outside system that will encourage you to follow through.  

Want to wake up earlier?  Have an early-bird friend call you every morning to hold you accountable.  Give that friend $60 at the start of a month, and every time you don't answer your phone, they get to keep $2.  Buy your favorite breakfast food (whatever you want, whether that's Lucky Charms or creme brulee), but you only get to eat it if you wake up early.  Basically, the more reward/punishment systems you can set up to hold yourself accountable, the better. The good news is that rewarding good behaviors works faster than punishing not following through.  So make sure to get that extra box of pop tarts.

Additionally, when you do reward yourself, make sure that you enjoy the reward, guilt-free.  If you are rewarding yourself with time allotted for video games, then don't play the games and think about how you "should" be working.  Just play the games for that set amount of time and have fun.  Just like if you're rewarding yourself with cookies, don't mourn the amount of butter in the cookies, just enjoy the cookies!

To help out anyone wanting to change a habit, we'll even offer to help you out.  Email us (info [at] monkeyandseal.com) with your name, email, and habit that you want to create, and we'll email you once a day for a week to offer words of encouragement and check in with you.  You can do it!  Start building a good habit today!

You Can Change Your Dreams

And that's vegan, gluten-free mushroom pizza, if you were wondering.

Here at Monkey + Seal, we're all about chasing dreams - more specifically, we want to inspire you to chase YOUR dreams.

But sometimes, as we're working towards that dream, you might feel uneasy.  Maybe it wasn't what you expected.  Maybe you've heard a bunch of negative things from people you respect and trust.  Maybe you've found a different passion.  Do you give up on that dream, or do you keep plugging away?

This is something that unfortunately, (just like most big answers in life), there is no simple solution.  We can't just tell you what to do, because every situation is going to be different for every person at different points in their lives.  However, let's talk it through.

First off, why are you experiencing this resistance to chasing your dream?  Is it the hard work?  Because if it is, know right now that most dreams are going to take a good amount of effort.  They don't have to, but if you want to be excellent at something, it's going to take your 10,000 hours.  So if you want to jump board just because "it's hard," while we get it, and we empathize, it's no reason to abandon your dream.

If you give up because of your natural inclination to go with what is easy and avoid the hard work, then the unfortunate reality is that you're very unlikely to reach any of your dreams.  No matter what it is, putting in the work (let us emphasize that the work doesn't HAVE to be hard, there is just usually a lot of it), is a necessary component for any dream.  If you give up now, you'll find another dream, and then you'll be more likely to give that dream up because of the work involved.

So what happens if it's not the work but something larger and more fundamental?  What about when you achieve your dream, and you find out that your dream has changed?  Maybe you're older and want something else, or maybe your life's priorities have changed.  That's okay too.  It's a natural part of growing.  Maybe you've realized that that dream company with all the status isn't really the best place for you. Perhaps you woke up one day realizing that it was your mentor's dream, or your parent's dream, or what you thought you wanted based on what you assumed a rational human being would want.  Maybe it is what you imagined that your ideal self would want.  A good example of this case is if you think you should want to be self-employed because tons of people (Monkey included) extoll the virtues and freedom and all the benefits of being self-employed, when you really want stability and security and to not have to worry about all the challenges self-employment might bring (legal status, taxes, permits, finding customers, etc. etc. etc.)  Perhaps maybe you're just bored now that you've finally gotten what you've always been working towards.

Regardless, we want you to know that IT IS OKAY.  Whether you've invested four hours or fourteen years, it's totally okay that your dream has changed.  It may feel at first like you've lost a lot of time, or that you wish that you discovered that it wasn't your dream earlier.  However, you probably wouldn't have ever even known that your dream wasn't right until you achieved it, and you wouldn't have wanted to live you life with a huge "What if" hanging around in the back of your mind.

Also, think about all the new things you've learned on your journey.  You've completed a journey, which is a huge accomplishment in itself, and you've probably learned about your new passion and goals from achieving your first (or second, or third, etc.) set.  Feel free to take some time to reflect on your path to where you are now, and give thanks for all the challenges you've learned from, the good and great stuff that's come out of your hard work, and all the people you've met and who have helped you get to where you are.

You might be frightened because you're starting over.  After all, to quote Linkin Park, "the hardest part of ending is starting again."  You're might be switching fields completely, going from being an expert to being a beginner again, or you could be just shifting over, utilizing a slightly different skill set than what you were doing prior.  Whatever it is, don't fret.  Change is good.  It keeps things interesting and it's okay to be a beginner again.

Remember: if you learned anything at all, (even "I hate this"), then it wasn't a waste of time.  Wrap  up what you have to, and start preparing for the next major journey in your life.

Adventures in the Creative Life

Now that it's January, I am seeing a lot of new yoga members at my gym. I have been doing yoga for about 7 years now and I notice the same pattern every year. There is an enormous influx of new members between end of November to mid March and very little attendance around July-October. Both old yogis and new members are as equally guilty. In January, a new intensity fills the air, there is a lot of talk of resolutions and goals. Everyone is very devoted, disciplined, and rigorous to their practice, so much so that they forget that it is supposed to be fun.

Here at the Monkey and Seal cave, we talk a lot about goals and resolutions. Being an artist, it is already difficult to find our "path." Our very mutable industry makes decisions and directions already very tough to begin with. So we think it is very important to have some rough outline or "road map" in where we want to go in our creative endeavors.

Because if you don't know where you want to go, you will either not move from your starting place, end up in a place you were not expecting, or who knows, maybe you make it to your destination, but it was without intention. Goals are road maps: they give us clear indication of where we have been, what our potential directions are, possible featured places we would definitely like to experience, if there is an endgoal, and how long would that distance be. Maps are also useful for when we get off track, we can always adjust, backtrack, or veer off in a new direction. We, at least, always know where we are at.

But the trick is, though we should take our goals and maps "seriously," we should never forget
that art is fun. We must never become too linear with our creativity or too much of a goal/career-orientated artist. Though we may have our trusty map, we should embed it into our psyche that there are multiple roads to get us to where we want to go, and we can always start and stop at anytime. Creativity and adventure is non-linear. The key to being a successful and creatively-fulfilling artist is to find the right balance between goals and adventure. Between direction and diversion. Between Career and Personal. Between Practice and Play. Between Seriousness and Whims. Because often times, it is Whims that create our highly original, unique, and personal pieces that will get the attention of the world.

When we were little, we drew things. They were fun and very different. Perhaps our well-meaning people noticed them, "these have potential - if we're serious enough to pursue it." How many times have artists been told to "get serious." So we become serious. Instead of drawing and painting, we begin to PRACTICE everyday. We have GOALS. We may end up in workshops and intensives and on the fast track towards a hot-shot art studio or design firm. Art becomes something we MASTER : we become constantly glued to looking at the map and we forget to enjoy the sights. We can do yoga poses out of habit and on command, but we have forgotten how it felt to first breathe, to just draw and paint on a whim.

I recently became acquainted with a high-profile, brilliant artist. He is very serious about his art. He has won many awards. He gets up at the crack of dawn, marches to his computer to paint, and sleeps at odd hours of breaking daylight. He attends all the independent master classes for artists and all the various workshops and conferences throughout the world. He is constantly sought after for book deals and collaborations. He has projects outlined and target goals posted in his studio and a miniature version of it in a .pdf file follows him around in his laptop. When I met him at a cafe, he has taken out all the "breaks" out of coffee break. He is talking a-mile-a minute, full of energy, but his face looked haggard. He talked about all the different various projects with other high profile artists that he is juggling and has lined up . The sternness in his voice when talking about art and creativity along with the foreign words coming out of his mouth regarding"mergers, maximizing profits, and climbing the ladder," all sounded strange to me. I notice a beautiful loose painted sketch in the first page of his book, and asked him about it. This piece of spontaneous art seemed very different than the person before me. He casually mentioned that it was done during lunchtime on his first day at one of his first jobs at the high-end film studio, many years ago. I couldn't help but asked, "When was the last time he painted with real paints as in the picture?" And he answered in surprise, "Oh," like the sketch suddenly crept up to him without knowing, "I don't remember." At this point, I unconsciously blurted out, "Are you having fun at all?" He stared at me as if I had just put worms in his coffee.

Although goals are necessary to give us a sense of purpose and direction, creativity is not meant to be "calculated." We are not meant to chug up the mountain, but to take a stroll through life. Though we'd like to backpack through the mountain and see what the view up there looks like, too, we'll take our time and take detours and pictures along the way. We'll start projects on whims, but we'll need the goals and road maps to help us finish them.

So when we talk about goals and resolutions at the Monkey and Seal cave, we present them more as personal challenges and changes that we would like to see in ourselves, better habits that would make creating art and sustaining our creativity more fun, guidelines that are meant to point us towards a direction, but we also know, that at any time, we can take a different road. And at anytime, we can stop at a rest area and open our picnic basket. At any point in our creative adventures, though it can still be tough and "serious," we can always choose to laugh through any storm.