Little Promises for Massive Success
Hello my lovely visionary! I want to talk with you today about building confidence as an artist—and a person. Confidence is not about a sense of false bravado, or always feeling like the best in the world. Confidence is about having a sense of security in yourself. That starts with self trust.
Do you trust yourself? Let me give you an example. If you say to yourself “I will get up at 7:30AM tomorrow morning”, do you know that you will follow through on that?
How about when you say to someone “I’ll get back to you by tomorrow”. Do you get back to them tomorrow?
How about when you say “I’m going to go running today”. Do you know you’ll follow through?
How about when you say “I’ll paint an hour a day this week”. Do you put it in your schedule and show up for yourself?
These are little promises that you make to yourself that you can choose to either follow through on, or let fall away. For little promises to yourself like this, you might be tempted to think that they don’t matter. After all, what terrible thing will happen if you don’t go running today like you promised yourself?
Nothing, today. But if those promises you make to yourself keep being broken, two things will happen. First, the thing that you are trying to do, will not happen. It won’t happen because you aren’t doing the necessary little things to make it happen. A painting is a series of tiny movements of your brush and intentions that come together to create a beautiful masterpiece. Likewise, a skilled surgeon performs one surgery at a time, one tiny movement with her scalpel at a time. If you don’t do those tiny steps, the big goal—the masterpiece, the successful surgery—simply will not happen. It’s the tiny choices that make up what becomes the bulk of our lives, and compound to create the reality we live in today.
Second, you will start to internalize not trusting yourself. If day after day you say “I will paint today”, but you do not, pretty soon your brain won’t believe you, because you are giving it evidence of otherwise. It is dangerous to make this a habit because breaking promises to yourself leads to lower self esteem, a desire to hide, and avoidance—none of which will take you where you want to go! And when you are used to breaking promises to yourself, it becomes a habit to break promises to other people, too. It becomes a downward spiral. And professionally, people want to work with people who keep their promises and deliver on their word.
This is often what happens with new year’s resolutsions. We set very high goals, and then when we can’t follow through, we give up altogether, so we don’t have to keep breaking promises to ourselves.
There’s another solution though—one that will build confidence and character from keeping the tiny promises to yourself. The solution is to make yourself at least one daily promise, and follow through on it! It can be as easy as “I’m going to take a shower today.” Then, when you take a shower, you are fulfilling the intention and the promise to yourself! This tiny promise sets your mind up to believe you next time you make another commitment. The key is to keep making easy promises to yourself, and following through on it. “I’m going to eat lunch today”. “I’m going to respond to 10 emails today”. “I’m going look at art books for 15 minutes”. or “I’m going to sketch for 10 minutes”. These effortless goals, when you follow through on them, will train your brain to believe you and give you more confidence. Pretty soon, you will start to think of yourself as someone with integrity, who always follows through on what they say…even if it’s only to yourself!
From there, you can move on to bigger self-promises. Things like painting 4 hours a day, applying for grad school, or running a marathon. But always remember that every big goal is nothing but 1,000 miniature promises that you have kept to yourself. And with every promise you keep, you build confidence and cast a vote for the kind of person that you want to be!
So what promise will you keep to yourself today?
xo,
Jessica
ps—I’d love to empower you more. Click here if you’re an artist interested in upleveling your career with one on one coaching. I’m so excited to help you reach your goals!
How to create your own gravity as an artist
Hello my beautiful visionaries! So what has the concept of gravity to do with your art career? More than you might think! Let’s start with a definition. Gravity is a natural phenomenon by which all things with mass or energy—including planets, stars, galaxies, and even light—are brought toward one another. On Earth, gravity gives weight to physical objects, and the Moon's gravity causes the ocean tides.
To watch my youtube video on this topic, click here.
That’s the official definition! But for our purposes, I like to define gravity as “The ability something has to draw things to it by using its own attractive pull, and create around it its own orbital path.
Applying this to your art career, we could imagine everyone in the art world is their own celestial body. We see galaxies of people who are like minded making similar work, and solar systems of institutions like schools or galleries. If artists are like stars or meteors, we see them flocking around these larger solar systems and galaxies, hoping to be a part of it. But what happens when you have this attitude? You become a part of the galaxy, yes, but you also get lost in the hundreds of other celestial bodies who are trying for the same thing, hoping to orbit a specific gallery or institution. It is placing all your identity on something outside your control. And sometimes, you don’t quite make it into the orbit and you get thrown off into space again, on your own.
What I want to talk to you about it building your OWN planet of your art career, so that just like in space, you draw other celestial bodies towards your art planet—and with a strong gravity like this, you have your pick of opportunities and don’t have to worry about being thrown out of orbit, because you have direct control over your world.
So the first thing you can do to create your own gravity is to strengthen your foundation. Planets with a strong gravitational pull are very dense and have a lot of weight to them. What I mean by strengthening your foundation, is strengthening your discipline. Make a schedule for how many hours you will be working on your art each week, and stick to it. Research opportunities and make a calendar that you can refer to each month to see what you need to apply to. Keep track of your finances going in and out, and make monthly income goals for your art and ways to achieve them. And, have your long term goals posted where you can see them in your studio. The idea behind strengthening your foundation is creating a work schedule for yourself that keeps you accountable, and with systems in place so that you can gain momentum the more you do them and scale your art career.
The second thing you can do is create an opportunity for yourself and others. In space, large planets have lots of celestial bodies orbiting them, because they have an attractive pull to them. They are not alone. In the same way, you don’t have to join another person’s galaxy to create your own tribe of people, you can create your own. The key is to make something that you wished existed or wish you would be a part of. For instance, if you want to be showing more, perhaps you could talk to some artist friends and start curating shows together. Or, maybe you have a blog, and instead of ONLY featuring your own work, maybe you could interview different artists and art luminaries! Once you get more people involved in your art career by creating something attractive for them, you will start to see your tribe flocking to the gravity you are creating with these experiences!
The third thing you can do is to beautify your planet. To create your own gravity as an artist, people need to be drawn into your world and the planet you inhabit.
So think about everything you do: the work you create, the supplies you use, and even the way you set up your studio, the photos you share, all describes the world that you are creating with your art. So be very intentional about the aesthetic that you are sharing within your art career. A consistent aesthetic within your art will draw luminaries towards you, because they want to be a part of your world. That’s when you start seeing requests for collaboration, loyal buyers of your work, and growing your following.
I also wanted to let you know that I’ve just created a gift for you from my heart that I am SO excited to share with you. It is a free guide called 30 days to 3k: the definitive guide to authentically increase your art sales. In this 15 page guide I share how I’ve created amazing results in selling my art online, while retaining the worth of my art and feeling authentic. I’m sharing the process that has worked to get results for me. All you have to do to get it, is go to my coaching website, www.thevisionaryartistssalon.com , or click the link in bio, and enter your email, and it will be delivered right to your inbox! I hope it brings you so much value, and let me know how it works for you!
For those of you ready to really transform your art career from the inside out to experience more abundance, creativity, and success, I encourage you to consider my completely personalized coaching program, the Artist Soul Mastery Academy private coaching. In this one on one coaching program my mission is to empower you to become the artist you’ve always dreamed of being by helping you remove internal blocks and step into the powerful and worthy artist you are meant to be. For a limited time I’m doing free 30 minute explore calls to find out if this would be the right fit for you. To apply for a call, visit the coaching website at www.thevisionaryartistssalon.com or, shoot me a DM @visionaryartistssalon —I’m here to chat!
Thanks for reading, and I will talk to you soon! Remember that you are already worthy, and everything you make is an expression of your unique spirit. Go forth and create!