,
do you know where the richest place on earth is?
It’s not Wall Street or Silicon Valley or Beverly Hills.
It’s the graveyard.
Why? Because, as Les Brown explains:
“That’s where you’ll find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the
books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, and the cures that were never discovered.”
What a sobering thought. And sadly, it’s true.
The reason so many people fall short of their potential is because of that nasty F-word, “Fear,” as well as its corruptive cousin, “Uncertainty.”
These twin culprits have stopped more great ideas, works of art, literary classics, and timeless songs than any repressive regime ever has.
And they have no doubt stopped you in your creative tracks too.
These clever, conniving rascals come in all shapes and sizes: fear of failure, fear of success, fear
of ridicule, and fear of poverty, to name a few.
From the “uncertainty” side of the tracks, we get such inner dialogue classics as:
=> But I don’t know how to pull that off
=> How will I make enough money doing this?
=> What if I’m just not good enough?
It can be
frightening and overwhelming. And this leads a lot of potential artists to draw this conclusion:
People who “make it” in the arts must have learned to banish fear and slay the uncertainty monster.
The “chosen few” have a special gift that shelters them from these two evil thought demons.
This leads to the
disempowering idea: “I am obviously missing the fearless gene, so I’m not cut out for this path.”
Please allow me to set the record straight:
That is absolute hogwash! (I’m not even sure what hogwash is, but it seems like the appropriate word to throw in here.)
Stop deluding yourself with this “Super Artist Fear and Uncertainty
Deflector Shield” notion.
The truth is every artist — no, let’s make that every person who is alive and conscious — has regular, reoccurring feelings of fear and uncertainty.
It goes with the territory of being human, although creative people do seem to be affected by it more than most.
So, those
talented artists you look up to have not learned to banish fear and uncertainty. They have not silenced them.
Instead, they have learned to carry on despite them. They manage to put them in their place and lower the volume knob of resistance they create.
If you are serious about being an Empowered Artist, you will learn to do the same.
FYI, this is an excerpt from my book, “The Empowered Artist: A Call to Action for Musicians, Writers, Visual Artists, and Anyone Who Wants to Make a Difference With Their Creativity” — available on Amazon in 13 countries.
https://amzn.to/49IAiat
P.S. How do YOU handle fear and uncertainty when they arise?