Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life

by Chase Jarvis

The danger is twofold. On the one hand, you can become paralyzed by all the decisions you need to make.

On the other hand, you can rush through the initial decisions in your enthusiasm to get something off the ground, only to realize that you’ve doomed a promising project out of hastiness.

First, risk is inevitable in creative work, and no amount of preparation can completely protect you.

Second, there is a sane middle ground between leaping off a cliff and hoping there’s a net at the bottom and planning the leap for three months before becoming distracted and wandering over to some other chasm.

Do enough research, ask enough questions, but remember that action—taking a risk—is the beating heart of creative work.

Your creative failures will hurt, too. If you’re willing to sit with them, however, you’ll start to see things a little differently. Time passes. Wounds heal, if you allow yourself to feel them.

My dear friend Brené Brown put it best: “To strip failure of its real emotional consequence is to scrub the concepts of grit and resilience of the very qualities that make them both so important: toughness, doggedness, and perseverance.”

Failure sucks. It hurts, and you couldn’t pay me enough to do it on purpose. But like death and taxes, failure is unavoidable.

We need early failures to develop the skill set to manage success when it comes later on. When you do inevitably face-plant, pick yourself up, brush off the dirt, and don’t make the same mistake twice.

Rack up as many rejections as you can.

Don’t just accept risks, take them on with zest and zeal. Muster courage, confidence, and enthusiasm.

Make failure fun now so you can develop your failure muscles before you take out the second mortgage to fund a creative project—only for it to go up in flames, taking your financial stability with it.

Having a few projects cooking at once is another great way to let go of perfect and get unstuck.

Every creative failure contains the seeds of a future victory, if you’re willing to dig for them.

Identifying as a creator means choosing to realize your creative aspirations. This requires sitting with fear, coming to terms with self-doubt.

everyone feels like an impostor sometimes.

you laugh at your mistakes first, whoever laughs at you will be late to the party.

Your goal should always be to become the best you, not a pretty good—or even damn good—version of somebody else.

Years of mindfulness practice have taught me that we are not the voices in our heads.

Step IV Amplify Amplify your vision to create the impact you seek.

10 Find Your People

Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much. —HELEN KELLER

We thrive on human connection. Creators aren’t exempt from this need.

The acid test is this: if you’re walking the path but getting nowhere, go find communities of other humans who are passionate about the same things you are and get involved.

This has been really powerful for me as I did things with principal associations.

Just do, give, be of service, be visible. This is how the magic of collaboration begins, even if it isn’t immediately obvious.

If you wish you had more comments and likes on your social channels, comment and like on the social channels of people you admire.

Be the fan you wish you had.

find a collaborator whose skills and talents are as exciting to you as yours are to them. It takes effort to create a real creative match with one person, let alone several, but the benefits of a good match make up for it.

Sometimes they’re afraid someone will run away with their amazing idea. But let me assure you, no one wants your idea.

Putting an NDA into place on a low-level project is like requesting a DNA test before you go on a date.

To become a creator, you have to be willing to forge healthy, supportive relationships with amazing new people and reexamine any toxic relationships you’re already in. The

You can always summit new peaks once you’ve established your base camp, but you need to start on solid ground.

There’s a sense that when one person succeeds, the whole community wins together.

Community is an essential source of support for any creator. You can participate in at least two right off the bat: your Craft Community (e.g., photography), and the area where you apply your craft, your Focus Community (e.g., action sports).

Maybe you’re not a joiner. I can’t say that joining has ever been easy for me. But it’s worth being vulnerable and putting yourself out there.

They’re made of people just like you, and people can change just as you change.

You may need to take a few lumps here and there and prove that you’re willing to stick it out with everyone else—whether

I could help my peers see that “getting the certificate” isn’t the only possible objective of a class.

We could set our sights higher using technology to make learning deeper, more holistic, and immersive. I wanted us to create valuable resources for learners to explore in their own way and at their own pace.

To drive change and awareness, I needed authority. To gain authority, I needed to participate authentically—...

here’s the important part—talk to lots of people you meet there.

Thoughtful, helpful comments do get noticed, even if time doesn’t permit the person to respond to all of them.

Sustained effort over time is key.

Volunteer your skills, be willing to do what it takes, and get that karma flowing.

You’ll learn quickly this way, and, eventually you’ll help build the foundation of a more vibrant creative ecosystem to support your own work.

One of the most valuable dividends is the opportunity to meet and collaborate with others.

I needed collaborators to realize my creative vision, and so do you.

I also look for ways to collaborate outside my areas of expertise.

Collaborating outside your comfort zone is scary but empowering.

It can be intimidating to surround yourself with people as good as or better than you are, who care as much or more than you do, but remember this: A-gamers work with A-gamers, B-gamers work with C-gamers. If you want to be great, surround yourself with awesome people doing their best work, even if it keeps you on your toes more than you’d like. The best way to level up your own game is to level up the team around you.