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

by Chase Jarvis

Even as your community grows, don’t forget your base camp.

That was why I worked in a ski shop, to be around people who ski and snowboard all day!

Attend. Talk. Ask questions and answer them. Add value. Slowly but surely, your community will take shape.

Make Your Own Mentor

Everyone wants a mentor,

When I realized that no one was going to mentor me the way I’d always imagined, I turned to books. It was actually pretty simple. To learn how to run my photography business, I read The Business Guide to Photography.

Even if you’re sitting in your sweats in your house in Ohio, go online and retweet the creator whose business you admire. Leave a thoughtful comment and share her message every day for two years. Not in a creepy way, in a thoughtful one. By that point, I don’t care who she is, she’ll know who you are. And if you happen to meet in real life one day?

devoted, real-life human mentor falling into your lap would be an amazing thing if it happened. But don’t hold your breath. This is exactly the kind of grasping, take-before-you-give mentality that poisons a new community.

We’re always looking for an opportunity to hand the keys over to someone else. That’s a one-way ticket back to where you started.

Be smart. Make your own mentor. Read, listen, and learn—the resources are limitless.

Then, be of service, add value, and forge connections with the people you admire.

Building your audience and then cultivating it—no matter its size and no matter how far your own star rises—is the missing ingredient for 99 percent of the creators I meet who feel that they’re not succeeding.

12 Launch!

You have something important to contribute, and you have to take the risk to contribute it. —MAE JEMISON

To be clear, whatever you do with the results of your creative efforts, doing the work itself is intrinsically valuable and fulfilling.

we feel nervous at times like these because we’re invested in them. We care about the outcome, and our body tries to help us achieve our goal by going into high-alert mode. If I don’t have jitters before a launch, it’s a sign to me that the work isn’t ready because I’m not fully invested in it yet.

this step isn’t the end. It’s just the beginning of another exciting chapter in your life as a creator. This is the part where your creation does work out in the world and where the impact of your creativity starts to make itself more widely known.

When you resist sharing proudly, you’re listening to shame.

You’re not born with it. Shame is something you put on early in life and then it sticks, like a sweaty shirt. Unexamined, it will stifle your ambitions and choke the life out of your creativity.

I still felt embarrassed, but the feeling underneath that was guilt, not shame. I’d done something wrong, but I wasn’t wrong. I was okay. I’d simply made a mistake.

you are not your work.

This is difficult to reconcile because your work does reflect you, your skills, tastes, values, and beliefs.

You have to become vulnerable to create and even more vulnerable to share your creations with others. But it gets easier with practice. And every time you share in the face of fear, your work...

As creators, each of us has to learn to nurture and parent ourselves, particularly where creativity is concerned. I’d love for you to think of this entire book as a manual for doing this.

Brené Brown shared with me that she keeps a tiny list in her wallet with the names of a handful of people who matter most to her. Whenever she feels the weight of other people’s opinions too strongly, she consults the list. “Have I let any of these people down? No? Then I’ll be okay.”

Sharing our work requires the same resilience, the same discipline, the same attention to self-care as creating it in the first place.

Start by sharing your initial ideas with friends and mentors or on social media. Then graduate to short stories or long blog posts. It’s like lifting weights: work your way up to it, or risk pulling a muscle.

When developing a sharing mindset, think authenticity and vulnerability. Learning to embrace both takes time and practice.

Be soft and vulnerable in creating; ferocious and bold in sharing.

there’s a circular flow you’ll find in the life of any healthy and productive creative person: Create > Share > Promote > Cultivate Community > Create (Again).

No one, no matter how famous or successful, gets to bow out of the sharing phase and just create all day.

whatever it takes to back up all the hard work they’ve invested in the film itself. This honors the work. You

I would argue that the great artists achieved that greatness in part because they spent time and energy inviting you to experience their work.

Rest assured, no one is born knowing how to share. It’s always uncomfortable at first. That said, if you strongly resist promoting your work, it’s time to ask yourself: Are you working on the right stuff?

It doesn’t feel like “selling” if you believe your stuff will make people happier, make them think, drive social change, help people feel more fulfilled, entertained, whatever.

Creative expression is as important to human health as exercise and mindfulness.

as we improve, as we fall in love with our work, we naturally find ourselves wanting to find it an audience and help it make an impact.

rack up as many rejection letters as possible.

I think you do have ambition. Many of us learn to keep it locked up inside.

Physical fitness, nutrition, and mindfulness are especially important to creators because both creating work and promoting it place huge demands on us.

As you complete and share your work, your confidence grows even if the work doesn’t become outwardly successful.

You learn that you have agency and that you can complete what you start.

Enthusiasm inspires confidence and energy in others. Its effects, therefore, are pote...

With enthusiasm and confidence on your side, all that’s missing is a bit of courage.

Courage is the thing you need to get started—before confidence is built through repetition and before enthusiasm is there to inspire you.

Confidence, courage, and enthusiasm play a central role in anyone’s success.

Sharing with courage, confidence, and enthusiasm starts things out on the right foot.

Sharing successfully doesn’t mean the work will be a “success.” But it doesn’t have to succeed. This is important. You can do everything right and still get things wrong.

The mindset and energy you bring will keep you resilient through all the failures you’ll face as a creator. Without them, you will crumble right away.

You learn from every failure.