A Life Well Lived

What do impressionist paintings and a successful life have in common? They both become much clearer when viewed from far away.

Think about it: when you initially set out after a goal, you're in the thick of things. This is the whole 'you can't see the forest for the trees' experience - it is incredibly hard to take a broad objective perspective on something when you're hiking through a valley forest and all you see are rocks, green stuff, and sky (followed by more rocks, green stuff, and sky). For all you know, that forest might go on forever -- and when you reach a difficult pass, it's easy to feel like that dark, thorn-infested, spooky-looking patch is just a preview for how hard the rest of your journey is going to be.

Worst. Hike. Ever.

For example, you may have heard of the man who wrote these words:

"That can't be my story.
That's only a start.
I'll say that a ZEBRA was pulling that cart!
And that is a story that no one can beat,
When I say that I saw it on Mulberry Street."

Jerk Alert.

That would be Theodor Suess Giesel, better known as Dr. Suess. Did you know twenty-seven different publishers rejected his first book, To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street? How in the world do you say "no" to Dr. Suess? Apparently they all hated fun, and probably spent their days twirling their evil mustaches and despising green eggs and ham. No matter -- even before Mulberry Street found a publisher, the Dr. Suess success machine was up and running -- but it might have been hard to tell that from behind a desk covered by rejection letters.

And what about Oprah? She seems pretty cool - I mean, she's only one of the richest and most influential women in the world. But first, she had to survive an abusive childhood and numerous setbacks -- including being fired from her job as a television reporter because she was "unfit for TV." Yes, the woman who presides over a massive media empire and and whose daytime talk show / awesome-stuff-giveaway-apparatus appeared in 2.6% of American households daily (that's 7.4 million people, Holmes) - OPRAH - was not the kind of person TV execs thought belonged in front of a camera.

Success tastes sweetest when served over hater's regret-flavored tears.

The point is that wherever you are in your journey, you need to keep in mind that things aren't necessarily going to fall into the imaginary narrative arc that you have planned out inside your head. Let go of those expectations, and just stick to the business of getting through the here and now. As Dr. Suess would say,

“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
ou can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go [...]
 You're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So... get on your way!”

There and Back Again: A Creative's Journey

Hopefully, your metaphorical mountain
has less metaphorical dragons.

Yesterday, Kadie talked about NeilGaiman's method for finding your mountain. While this sounds fairly simple, much like identifying what you want to be when you grow up, it gets significantly harder to do once you've graduated.

We're here to tell you – it's okay to embrace the process.

In photography, sometimes you have to wait until the light is right. In painting, the canvas may need to dry before you can apply more color. In writing, you can go through drafts and drafts (and drafts) before you come up with something you want to share with anybody. Dance and theater and comedy and music all require hours of rehearsal and preparation.

Why should it be any different in life?

We have this narrative in our culture, that once you're an adult you need to have everything figured out – where you're going, who you are, why you're here. We've touched on it before in this blog, here and here. Artist after artist after artist has also challenged this assumption, from Jack Kerouac's On the Road to Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx's Avenue Q, to Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture, to every Adam Sandler movie ever. And that just covers a few of the works from American pop culture.

The reality is, finding your mountain takes time – sometimes a lot of time. I first tried my hand at Jackie Battenfield's exercise about four years ago – and my answers were dramatically different from what I'd say today. I was planning on going to grad school – NOPE – I was planning on becoming a professor (probably not), and I was planning on having all that stuff accomplished by the time I turned 28, so I could get to settling down and having one of those baby things my friends keep talking about, but still keep up with my thriving art career.

While none of those goals are on my horizon today, at least not in the form I originally anticipated (Would someone please tell my 22-year-old self that building a career takes more than a couple of years? Thanks), I'm still glad I travelled toward what I thought was my mountain – again, and again, and again. The reason? Each time I started working towards my then-goal, it brought me to a new perspective in my life – at which point I'd spot a goal that I wanted even more. At 16, I knew I wanted to be an artist, but I had no idea what that looked like. At 26, I still don't really know what that looks like, but I know that it involves having time for my family and friends and making enough money to support my foodie fine dining habits. This is the hill I'm on today, and I think I know what mountain I'm aiming for – but that might change at the next overlook.

And that's okay.

How Perseverance Helps Creativity Blossom

Guest Post Time!

Christi is the brilliant genius behind Novel Conclusions. A former English teacher and aspiring author who loves everything related to words and creativity, she currently writes and lives in Southern California. Go check out her blog at NovelConclusions.com - you know you want to. And now, let's get to today's post.

In Kadie’s post last Tuesday, she highlights a talk by Candy Chang where Candy reminds us that “life is brief and tender” and that we must decide what we will do with our lives. We must take action in order to create in our lives. Creativity, the art of creating, the act of innovating, requires decisive action and perseverance in keeping that momentum going. A spark of inspiration is great, but we have to fuel the fire to keep it blazing.

Being a master of your craft and of your own creativity requires perseverance, study, and figuring out what works for you. Anyone can have an idea, but you are the only person who can bring that idea to the world with your signature touch on it. The glory of art is in the execution. Van Gogh and Monet (and honestly, a ridiculous amount of people if you judge by the crazy amount on Google Images) have painted hay stack landscapes, but they look very different in the execution.

What Van Gogh and Monet have in common in this instance is that they painted prolifically to get things right. They painted everything around them over and over and over – and over again – until they couldn’t even look at hay stacks anymore. They persevered to get the lighting and the brush strokes and the color just so. Their creativity, the mastery of their craft, was fueled by persistently pushing forward and experimenting. They kept on working and trying new things when others would have stopped.

Author JK Rowling was famously rejected by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury accepted the Harry Potter manuscript, but she kept on pushing. Pierre-Auguste Renoir suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis, but he kept painting anyway and became one of the most prolific Impressionist painters of his era. Thomas Edison (who reminded us that "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration”) was one of the most prolific inventors in history; his creative innovations in electricity led to the technological advances that allow you to read this blog.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, he expands on this theory and gives example after example of individuals who became masters of their craft after putting in roughly 10,000 hours working on their specialty (check out this really cool detailed infographic about the 10,000 hour theory here). HOWEVER – big caveat coming up here, people – this does not take into account mindless repetition. If you play “Chopsticks” on the piano for 10,000 hours, you still won’t be Beethoven. So what does this take into account?

Perseverance in your craft means:

• Practicing areas of your craft that are (currently) outside your comfort zone
• Checking yourself (where am I at with this skill? How can I expand my knowledge of this aspect?)
• Always devouring ideas related to your field (like reading art-related blogs!)
• Working to create and innovate even when you want to be doing something else
• Not being afraid to fail – every failure is a stepping stone toward mastery

Perseverance can open up new avenues for your creativity. Sometimes when you push through, you find something you never expected. How are you taking action to create in your life? What have you created when you kept pushing? What else does perseverance do to support creativity that I didn’t mention?

Leave your thoughts in the comments below.



P.S. Check out this awesome TED talk on grit and how it impacts success:





Want to read more from Christi? Check out her blog at NovelConclusions.com.