Don't Hold Anything Back

Monkey talks a lot about business sometimes, but even more important over the course of your entire life is the art itself.  Too often we might focus on what is going to take us to the path of the "professional" artist the fastest, when we ignore what might be best for our inner artist in the long run.

We often talk about the "hustle" and the drive to make sure that you get your art out there.  We talk about marketing (Monkey even wrote a book on selling your art), but we want to take this opportunity to emphasize on how important it is to nourish your inner artist's soul.

Yes, we all need to make money, and yes, if we can make money off our art, then we can do more of what we love.  That's why Monkey is always on your case to get your hustle on.  BUT!  The sneaky seemingly perplexing truth of it all is that you have to do more of what you love regardless of your circumstances.  Jobs and opportunities and all that stuff follows if you just do what you love.

Sure, this may sound new-age hocus-pocusy wackiness, but it's true.  The one minor huge caveat is that you can't hold anything back.  If painting is what you love, and you're trying to do a specific style, or if you're trying to stay focused on one single thing (when you don't really want to focus), then you're holding back.  If you feel this overwhelming urge to paint an elephant playing soccer but you have to finish your homework, you're holding back.  If you desperately need to paint something dark and painful from your past, but are afraid to, you're holding back.  If you let people tell you "you're too ____," or "you're not  ____ enough," or "your work is missing ____," and you believe them, you're holding something back.

So you've got to take your brush in your hand and let it explode.  Don't hold anything back.  If you need to attack the canvas, do so.  If you need to coax out the art with a gentle touch, do so.  Whatever form it takes, by embracing that uniqueness, that essence that is undeniably YOU, let it out.  For better or worse, by inhibiting what you really want to do, you'll never really reach the heights that you were meant to soar to.

So while you may feel the pressure to get your hustle on, that is even more of a reason why you need to embrace your inner artist and really let it rip.  Don't hold back.  We know it's scary as hell, but if you're going to dive in, you have to dive deep and really let yourself explode into the awesome artist that we know you are.

So get out there and don't hold anything back.

Shutting Down the Heckler

Inside your head there is a voice. Where it came from isn't all that important, but it'll probably take on the voice of one of your greatest critics. Maybe your parents, maybe a teacher, someone perhaps who you thought was your friend but really isn't.

"You suck."

"You're doing it wrong."

"That totally didn't work."

Sound familiar? This butthole voice is what Seth Godin calls "The Heckler." While I think you should all go read Seth Godin's description here about The Heckler, we'll sum it for you in a sentence: "The Heckler is part of your primal, lizard brain that you can't ever really get rid of. If you fight, it will fight harder, and the only way to get rid of it is to disable it."

So, Monkey and Seal, how do you disable the Heckler? The Heckler is a big bully that takes pleasure in your resistance - it enjoys the fight, and is just waiting for you to tell it to shut up so you can yell louder. Using one simple phrase will take the wind out of the bastard's sails, making it weaker and quieter. That phrase is:

"So what?"

If you've ever been taunted, or teased, or a victim of bullying, the immediate, primal urge is to react against the insults. You refute the disparaging claim or you try and throw it back at the bully. However, as it is the nature of a bully, it will take pleasure in your obvious reaction and will continue on its bully ways of attacking you. However, it stops being fun for the bully when you don't react, or care.

Instead of "No, my painting doesn't suck, yours sucks!" it's "My painting sucks? So what?" Its the exact opposite reaction the Heckler needs to continue on the fight.

"That brushstroke doesn't work. So what?"

"I messed up in that last routine. So what?"

"I didn't win that competition. So what?"

Now we don't want you to turn into some self-effacing downer that's just all negative. By saying "So what?" the goal is not to get down about whatever deficiency (imaginary or real) that your inner Heckler is bringing up. The goal is to realize that whether the Heckler is right or wrong, it's not the end of the world.

The skies won't rain blood just because you missed a note in that last solo. The earth won't implode because you didn't render those hands enough. The sun won't die just because your proportions are off.

If we have the fortitude and imagination to dream, we also have the imagination to whip up illusions of grandeur where we become painfully inadequate compared to Everyone Else. However, even when we are at the height of our careers and a huge mistake could cost us everything, we still tend to overreact to mistakes and to exaggerate what Everyone Else thinks about us.

If you're an aircraft controller, the stakes are high. Planes could crash, people could die. If you're a painter, most likely you are not going to be put in a situation where your performance is a life or death situation. The Heckler is telling you that it's the end of the world, that your imperfection (perfection is overrated anyway, remember?) is a huge deal. It's not. You screwed up. So what? Learn from it and grow. There are no mistakes, just opportunities for growth.

The point of disabling the Heckler is not to stop criticism. The point of disabling the Heckler is taking the work-stopping, genius-interrupting, creativity-killing emotional sucker punch that comes with the taunts of the Heckler and taking the poison out of them. Criticism is good, it helps you grow, but if you take it personally and shut down, then all it's doing is getting in your way of living up to your true potential of making something magical and wonderful.

Why Your Competition Will Crush You

Dark Wizards are both competitive, nosy neighbors, and general sapphire-loving jerks.

Don't be a Dark Wizard.

That's right, your competition will crush you.

Not because you aren't wonderful and talented and amazing, because you are all those things whether you're willing to admit it or not. Not because your competition is better, stronger, faster, whatever. The reason your competition will kick your butt is because when we say "your competition," we don't mean other people/organizations/things that are competing with you. We mean "the competition that you're taking part in."

Especially now that we're completely over-saturated with media (thanks internet!), we can often find examples that prove our own internal head-demons right. With not much searching, we can find that famous person who started out homeless and a drug addict and then became a noble-prize winning scholar (or some crazy story like that). We can find examples of people who were in our own situations and then became wildly successful (seemingly overnight, as per the flash and bang of most stories like these). After hearing about something like that, how can we not compare ourselves?

So like we said in our title, your competition will crush you. It is much harder fighting the good fight when it seems like you've already lost to someone else. When we constantly compare ourselves to others, we never get a chance to really compare ourselves to our true potential, which is what really matters in the end. In that sense, the battle is lost before it's fought. So how do you win the fight with yourself?

The best way to overcome this potentially debilitating self-criticism is to not compare yourself to other people at all. While we're not advocating sticking your head in the mud and ignoring the world, what really is the use of comparing yourself to other people? Is there any point to compare ourselves to outliers that aren't representative of the population as a whole? To make yourself feel worse about yourself? Really? Seriously, what's the point? We'll answer that for you - there is none.

There's no reason to fuel your own self-doubt. Other people will be more successful and less successful (by your standards - make sure you have already defined success for yourself), so get over it. You have something amazing locked up inside of you (don't try to deny it!), it's just your job to figure out what your gift to the world is and to go and nourish it and help it grow.

Everyone should tend to their own gardens without looking at your neighbor's as if their grass is greener. Everyone has the capacity and seed and raw potential to grow their own unique beautiful garden, but too much time is wasted on envying others' growth spurt. It's wasted time and energy. While you are busy focused on other people, you may have just missed your own tiny budding potential peeking its way from underground. Don't miss that chance and see for yourself how awesome you are and really embrace all your raw potential that you have as a human being.

Honor the seeds you have planted. Nurture it and be your own number fan. Only after you have loved yourself, will the world come to see you as you see yourself. Your competition can't crush you if it doesn't exist, so grab your water bucket and start growing something worthwhile. Remember, you can have it all (and more!) if you really want it, so drop the competition and be the greatest success you can be!