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

by Chase Jarvis

Get in front of people in your community however you can. Go to events, from big conferences to coffee shop meetups. If you connect with someone online in your area, invite them to meet face-to-face. Join Toastmasters International to hone your public speaking. Get involved with local entrepreneurs. Create events of your own, and help bring people together.

If you put something out there and people don’t like it or ignore it, the shame we carry says, “You are bad.” But here’s the thing: 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 has a chance to become exponentially more valuable.

My advice? Be soft and vulnerable in creating; ferocious and bold in sharing.

There is more to sharing than just pressing send. Promoting and cultivating community are two active, hands-on processes, as all-consuming as making the work itself can be. You can spend years making a masterpiece, but the promotional effort needs to be scheduled carefully if you’re going to build momentum.

But outside of the rare exception, publicly celebrating your work is a lively, helpful, beneficial part of the creative process in every medium. In fact, I would argue that the great artists achieved that greatness in part because they spent time and energy inviting you to experience their work. The effort required to spread the message in our work is an extension of the work, a factor in our growth and development as creators.

When you love your work, there’s a feeling that it needs to be in the world. 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. It isn’t dirty or selfish to promote, share, or invite others to your work when you’re truly proud of it. In that case, it’s not really just the eyeballs you’re after anyway; it’s hearts and minds and human connection.

Regardless of your project or your process, it’s essential to cultivate a love for what you’ve made and recognize the value in it for others. If you’re not feeling it, it’s a sign to recalibrate. Go back to Step I of the book. Reread it if you have to. Once you’re making the work you were born to make, that resistance will fade into the background.

My experience and what I’ve learned in talking to thousands of creators around the world is that 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. We all understand our work more as we share the work because it’s in the sharing process that our work’s potential more fully reveals itself.

The most impressive part, however, is watching Tony activate energy in others (and teach them to activate it themselves). He understands how much energy is required to make real change in your life, whether that means adopting a new habit or taking a major risk. That’s what all the jumping around and fire walking is about. Techniques like these are just the first and most visible steps in rewiring our nervous systems. They remind us what real energy feels like in the body and that it’s available to us on demand.

In a conversation on my podcast, the Swiss designer Tina Roth Eisenberg shared an amazing nugget of wisdom I’ll never forget: Enthusiasm is more powerful—and ultimately more valuable—than confidence. Confidence is all about yourself—you develop it by repeatedly orchestrating successful outcomes. 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. This is obviously an important and helpful trait to possess. Enthusiasm inspires confidence and energy in others. Its effects, therefore, are potentially far more valuable. If you can get ten or even a hundred other people excited, think of the network effects, value, and energy that are possible to create around your work.

I wrote this book to help you unlock a hidden part of yourself, a critical space sorely neglected in our culture. So many of us live our lives with a nagging sense that something important is missing. We finish school, build a career, start a family, buy a house, build friendships, and do all the other things society tells us make for a happy and fulfilling existence. And we still often don’t feel fulfilled. I’ve come to believe that creative expression is the missing element in a life well lived.

If you are simply willing to accept that you are a creator, responsible for designing and living your own dream, I will consider my job done. As your creative practice deepens and expands, you will experience a greater sense of direction over your own life. You will prove to yourself, over and over, that you have the power to turn your ideas into reality. This sense of agency and autonomy will bring you happiness and satisfaction like nothing else. Pursue your creative calling.