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People who believe they can learn, actually can (“growth mindset”). People who don’t believe they can learn, struggle to learn (“fixed mindset”). We used to believe that the brain stopped changing at a certain age, but now we know it never stops changing.
Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. —Pablo Picasso
“no matter who you are, you really are the only person with that voice. And that is the thing to really lean into, even if it’s weird.”
When we create our art, it’s a process of self-actualization. Your true self is constantly in conflict with the expectations of the world around you. Is it okay to do this? Will this make someone mad? Will I embarrass myself? Will I be stripped of my “best behaved” award?
When our true self doesn’t get a chance to follow its desires – when it doesn’t get the creative exercise necessary to arm it with a vocabulary in which to express itself – it acts out in strange ways.
The only way to become your true self is to find the art inside you and make it real. Your art is the best expression possible of who you really are. You make art when you take your passions, your interests, and even your compassion for others, and combine them to make something uniquely yours.
Your ego fears your art because if you follow your art, you will self-actualize. You will become your true self. But to do so, you will experience failure, and rejection, and fear.
One of the best forms of that fuel is your own curiosity. If you learn how to connect with your curiosity, not only will it propel you through the hard work of getting started, it will be there to keep you moving.
Either we do nothing more than fantasize, and never start, or we do start, but we lead ourselves into burnout.
If we never get started, we never get good, and you can’t get good without first being bad.
Part of what makes giving yourself Permission to Suck so powerful is the way that it uses your own perfectionism to your advantage. When you start off with bad work, the very fact that you started propels you to do better work.
You have to apply just the right amount of force in your commitments. If you make too small a commitment, you won’t gain enough momentum to keep moving. If you make too big a commitment, you’ll just end up cheating yourself.