4 Ways To Take Charge Of Your Creative Passion
Many of us spend much of our lives in daily habits that do not directly impact our creative passions. We get up, we work through our morning routine, and we drive off to class, work, or whatever occupies the eight or so working hours of our day.
Our dreams take a back seat due to necessity. Life is tactile. Dreams are just that—dreams. But what if I told you it doesn’t need to be this way? What if instead of living our peripheral hours, the time before and after work, in preparation for going back to work, we flipped the script?
In this article, I show you how to work backward, essentially flipping the cultural narrative many of us live under, so that we can not just follow our dreams, but live them.
Proactively Plan Around Pursuing Your Dreams
It’s healthy to prepare for the next day of work the night before. This helps ensure you arrive on time, prepared and equipped for your responsibilities. It is also natural to come home from a long day and want to take a mindless break.
These two actions seem like good habits, and in many respects they are. Preparing in advance is a positive way to get a jump start on your day, and relaxing after work is important for long-term stamina.
However, instead of fitting your goals into your leftover time, there are four steps you can take to proactively lead your dreams. If you’re determined to succeed in a career outside your day job, let’s dive in.
A brief note: While the below habits have helped me, I am in a different life stage than you may be. We all have unique responsibilities and commitments. Use the points that you believe can benefit you, ignore the ones that don’t, and don’t feel bad if your specific steps look different than others’. Everyone has a specific set of circumstances they must work with.
#1 - Create Healthy Habits That Fuel Your Growth
Intentionally creating healthy habits directly fuels your lasting growth. Imagine you work your nine to five day job as an interior decorator. You enjoy your job, you’re satisfied, but one day you hope to make your creative outlet a full time writing career.
Now imagine coming home from a long day of work and choosing a relaxing habit that could aid your future dream. It doesn’t need to be complicated, time consuming, or take too much thought. Here are a few examples:
Watch the Netflix show Abstract to inspire your own creativity
Subscribe to a learning platform such as MasterClass so you can watch something that aids your creative knowledge base
Invest in watching a show known for it’s well-written character arcs and subplots such as Downton Abbey
Making these small choices not only feels good, but also establishes a mindset habit: In order to live your dream, you must start living the life that will help work your dream into reality.
#2 - When Deciding Where To Spend Your Time, Think Long Term
Healthy habits are a great first step in changing your fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Over time, habits compound. While productive habits are the first step in achieving your goals, if you dream big, you’ll need to assess where you spend your time overall.
This is never more clear to me than when I’m writing on deadline. Sometimes an opportunity will come up that I want to be part of. If I’ve completed my word count for the day, great. I can join my friends. However, if I haven’t met my goals for the day, I have to ask myself two questions:
Do I reduce stress now, surrender my dream for tonight, and go join my friends?
Or do I commit to my dream, tell my friends next time, and get back to work?
A myriad of factors influence my decision. Naturally, I’m very extroverted and get energy from being around crowds. Sometimes, for my overall health, I need to put my work aside and commit to catch up on the weekend.
However, sometimes I need to prioritize my dream and make the choice to stay on track in pursuing my goals. Your success mindset can fluctuate—just make sure that over time, your decisions will positively influence you long term.
#3 - Assess If The Creative Journey Or The End Result Is Your Biggest Passion
I firmly believe that if you are learning, growing, and making the appropriate pivots as you pursue your dream, the last creative to give up, wins. However, many creatives give up at the hard points in the journey. They’ve been scaling the mountain leading to success for so long that the idea of achieving the goal is no longer strong enough to keep them going.
That’s why if you don’t truly enjoy the journey, you are likely to give up near the finish line, if not well before. It’s time to take a good look at yourself and truthfully answer the question: Am I pursuing my dream because I love the creative process or because I desire the accolades success will bring?
It’s not bad to desire success, but over time, exhaustion often wins out over the desire for success. To help alleviate investing so much time in a project you may give up on, test yourself in a few ways. These tests can help ascertain if your biggest passion is working on the dream or achieving the dream.
Pay Yourself First Via Time Investment
In his bestselling book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki shares the story of two dads. After payday, one dad, Poor Dad, pays his bills first, then pays himself. Essentially, Poor Dad uses whatever is leftover to put into savings.
Rich Dad, on the other hand, pays himself first. Whatever is leftover after investing in his future financial security, he uses to pay his bills. This puts Rich Dad in a unique position. What if he doesn’t have enough financially to pay himself first and then pay his bills? If this is the case, Rich Dad must use creativity to come up with the necessary funds to pay his bills.
While I am not a financial advisor, the idea of paying yourself first is helpful because you can apply this example directly to your creative endeavors. When you decide to invest your time first in your long-term goals and second in the goals of others (your day job), like Rich Dad, this puts you in a unique position.
Now that you’re putting your goals first, how can you creatively find ways to succeed in both areas? For the majority of us, we all need a day job to pay the bills. We don’t have the luxury of giving up working for someone else to pursue our own dreams.
Rather than see this as a setback, view it as a roadmap. Now you have a guide that forces you to think creatively, discover lasting solutions, and prioritize your dream. A choice as simple as waking up an hour earlier for work and devoting the extra time to pursuing your dream can transform your mindset.
Learn To Accept Criticism As Positive Feedback
Second, growth is crucial to ultimate success. If you love writing and want to be the best writer you can, you will welcome feedback, even if it’s not bookended with positive flattery.
It can be difficult to accept criticism, let alone ask yourself how you can grow from criticism. However, if you truly desire to become the best creative you can, learning to accept feedback, both positive and negative, is a must.
Of course, if someone maliciously attacks your project, it’s wise to take a step back. But in many cases, many people simply lack tact in explaining what they didn’t like about your project. Consider the following example:
You publish your book on Amazon and decide to look at reviews. One person rates your book as a one-star and provides the following criticism: “The dystopian setting wasn’t uplifting at all, plus the protagonist was boring and unrelatable. I thought I’d try dystopia but I didn’t like the book at all.”
First, dystopian settings aren’t usually intended to be uplifting. You can assess whether you could include more light-hearted scenes in future books, but don’t take this personally, especially if the reader is new to this genre.
But secondly, ask yourself if there were instances where your protagonist could have been more proactively or relatable. If so, great, you learned something for future characters. If not, write this review off and move on.
Moving Forward Or Giving It Up?
These two tests can be a helpful way to assess:
If you want to put yourself through the journey because you love the process
If you don’t love the journey, but want to be seen as successful
Being successful is a great goal, but if success is your ultimate dream, you may want to consider a different career path for the sake of your mental health.
However, if your love for the creative process outweighs the negatives that come with it (and there are negatives in every career), then put a few inspirational quotes around your workspace and keep at it! You’re well on your way into your biggest adventure, and like all adventures, there will be highs and lows.
#4 - Set A Pace You Can Keep
If your habits are healthy, you think long-term, and you know that you’ve fallen in love with the creative journey itself, this fourth point should naturally fall into place.
There are several factors that go into setting a trajectory to meeting your goals and staying on the path to meet those goals. To help you honestly assess how much you can regularly invest in your dream, consider the following questions:
How many hours can I realistically commit to my dream, weekly?
Do I need to invest most of this time on weekends?
Can I invest time strictly during the work week?
How much, if anything, can I invest financially?
Are there mentorships or classes I should sign up for (free or paid)?
Are there materials I need to aid in my success?
How can I create an environment that contributes to my dream?
An organized office without distractions for writing time?
Turning off your notifications when editing your work?
Using a local coffee shop to work so you don’t have the distractions of home?
You may want to devote every spare minute to your dream, but chances are low you can keep this pace in the long run. Unless you live alone on a deserted island, you will run into people you know, make plans, and have responsibilities. Do your best to take these factors into consideration when setting your pace.
If you are a stay-at-home mom, maybe you need to write while the kids take their nap so you have time with your husband at night.
If you are a student, maybe you need to work on your dream on the weekends only so you can focus on homework and extracurriculars during the week.
If you work a traditional job, consider spending an hour or two before or after work, and a few hours on the weekend, devoted to your goal.
Whatever your life stage, acknowledge how it will impact your goal and set your path accordingly.
Swimming Against The Current: How To Stay Focused
In theory, taking charge of your passion and leading your dreams sounds like the best choice. In reality, it can get lonely. It feels bold, even audacious, to choose to spend hours working, unpaid, toward a reality you aren’t guaranteed. Unless you are immersed in a creative community or surrounded by other dreamers who have similar goals, pursuing your dream can get lonely.
This is where focus comes in. Inspirational dreams, quotes, and stories are helpful until the rubber meets the road and the friction of daily life occurs.
There is no easy answer to the difficulty of pushing against the current, investing in your dream, and doing it mostly alone. The simple key is to stay focused. How you can do so requires the grit of keeping up with the mundane that leads to growth.
Create your daily investment schedule
How much time can you commit, daily, to pursue your goal?
Set your daily goals a week in advance
What can you complete in your daily time allotment?
Repeat the process
Pursuing our dreams is an inspirational, three word phrase. In reality, it pushes us to grow in often uncomfortable ways, upsets our comfort zones, but eventually, can lead to dramatic change. Push against those negative thoughts and instead, focus on taking it one step at a time day by day and month by month. You’ll be surprised when you look back!
