a guide to growing your creative career, one step at a time
how to build your dreams in seasons
I spoke about this concept on this week’s episode of Big Creatrix Energy, here. Make sure you follow the show if you’d like to receive new uploads as they come out.
Whenever I want to change something in my life I back look at what I’ve been doing over the past 4-6 months.
Your current circumstances are the manifestation of your previous actions.
This can be a brilliant or devastating realisation.
The beautiful thing, though, is that it means you’re always in the perfect position to create the exact future you dream about. It can just take a minute for the results to kick in.
Have a quick glance around at your life right now.
Is there something you’d like to change? A few somethings, perhaps?
Brilliant.
All you have to do is this:
decide exactly where you want to go
identity the simple shifts in your daily habits, behaviour and thoughts that will create this change
continuously do those things
Looking at things very simply like this is how I grant myself patience, which doesn’t always come that naturally to me.
We trick ourselves into thinking we need to make dramatic declarations and set our whole life up in flames in order to create a new one. Sure, that’s one option but how has it worked for you in the past? It’s giving New Year New Me energy which, as we all know, is almost guaranteed to have a 3-week-burnout trajectory.
Give yourself the gift of ease.
You don’t have to set your life on fire.
Just adopt a bit of patience and know that your actions compound.
Those baby steps will accumulate to really big things in a few months.
I know what you’re thinking.
What the fuck does this have to do with building my life is seasons?!
I’m getting there, sweet babe.
Patience, remember.
So, it’s the new year and you have all these ideas for what you’re going to create and how rich and cool you’re gonna be. Love that for you. Let’s make it happen.
How do we do that? With baby steps and patience.
Creating Big Things requires baby steps.
When there’s a project you want to bring to life, break that mammoth of a thing down into the tiny incremental steps that you can tick off task-by-task. Not only is this disgustingly satisfying but it also massively increases your success rate.
This same principle can be applied to your entire creative career.
Each of those projects becomes a baby step in its own right. Every work of art you complete and piece of content you publish is a new component in your ever-expanding body of work. The way all of these projects fit together is how people come to know you. It’s the value you leverage. It’s the foundation to actualising your most outrageous dreams.
Every creative career is comprised of a few key elements that interact with one another.
The trouble is, when most people start they think they should have every element firing on all cylinders from day one. That’s entirely too much pressure and also not at all how things work. Like, for anyone.
When you see people online who are out here doing the thing the key elements of their business are well and truly in flow. They have a product line and sales are flowing in. They have an audience who are obsessed with them. They have a podcast and a youtube channel and they somehow seem to be posting on every social media channel all the fucking time.
And there you are, still with your training wheels on but expecting yourself to be leading the Tour de France.
Imma let you in on a little secret: you don’t have to do it all at once.
In fact, I strongly advise against it.
This is the alternative and the permission slip you’ve been waiting for: Pace Yourself.
Literally do one thing at a time. Give that thing your all. Do it so spectacularly people start to really pay attention.
To focus my time and energy, I like to split my year into quarters. For each 3-month increment I give myself one primary goal and it is my personal mission to succeed at that one thing before I advance on to the next.
You don’t have a whole year to do a bunch of things. You have three months to do one thing spectacularly.
When I set my goals in quarters, it means two things:
I don’t have the luxury of waiting around to start
I massively shorten the time available, which means I know for sure that I can actually only do a couple things at once successfully
Let’s discuss these further.
Remove the luxury of waiting to start.
Baby cakes, I know you like to plan. I know you like to make the perfect Pinterest board and fantasise about all the different ways you could create something and how lovely it’s gonna be. But that shit doesn’t get you anywhere.
You need to start testing out your ideas in real time.
The best way to figure out what works for you is to try as many different iterations as necessary until you land on your winning formula.
Resist the urge to over-complicate what it means to start something and just pick the first available option.
Begin, like now.
Shorten the time available.
When you narrow your planning frame from 12 months to 3, it puts shit into perspective. There’s no time for twiddling your thumbs. You just gave yourself some good pressure. This is the spark of action and inventiveness.
Figure out what you have to prioritise. What are the actions that will have the most impact and what’s the busy work you can completely disregard?
Hone in on this for three months and you will make so much progress that, once the time is up, you’ll be able to let off the gas and maintain momentum. You figure out your flow. You’re ready to add the next element of your business into the rotation.
As the seasons pass, you figure out your flow with each element, and you’ll see how they fit together.
Each project lends to the others. Your podcast will help direct sales to your products. Your products will deepen your relationship with your audience and even bring you new customers. The pieces fit together to create something bigger than the sum of their parts.
You didn’t have to do it all at once.
You were able to take your time and focus and do each element to the best of your ability and, importantly, enjoy the process of learning each skill.
So many people want to rush ahead not realising that the true value of building a creative business is that you get to make cool shit all day every day. Even when you get to wherever you so desperately wanna go, what’s required of you will remain consistent. You might as well let yourself have fun in the come up.
Here’s the episode if you’d like to listen to me chit chat on the topic
