A step-by-step guide!
Step 1: Embody a disempowered stance towards money
This will allow you to either become a sell-out or a starving artist
Step 2: Advance technique and technology for their own sake
This will make it seem like you’re progressing, but without the enjoyment and soul that makes such progress worthwhile
Step 3: Do it for the fame (or to avoid shame)
This will instill performance anxiety, self-doubt, an overactive inner critic, and an empty feeling in your heart
Step 4: Exert your willpower ever more strongly
This will give you the illusion of efficacy in the face of challenges, but in the end lead to injuries, tension, and burnout
When you follow these four steps, your creative process will never fully satisfy, your well-being will suffer, and you’ll never feel confident that your art matters to today’s world.
In other words, your art will be meaningless!
We hope you enjoyed this easy-to-follow tutorial. 😀
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Obviously, no artist wants to create meaningless art.
No artist wants their creative process to feel like drudgery, to sell out, or to diminish their well-being.
AND YET…
…this is what happens for all too many of us.
If this happens for you, it’s not your fault. It’s not that you didn’t try hard enough, that your creative impulses aren’t good enough, or that you just don’t have what it takes.
Instead, it’s a sign that you’ve unconsciously been worshiping false idols: the “Lesser Gods” of the arts.
Here are the Lesser Gods. They consist of the outdated idea that artistic mastery consists of the maximization of:
Money,Technique/technology,Status, andPower.
What’s wrong with the Lesser Gods?
When you focus too narrowly on them, you miss the point of what art is all about:
InspirationHealingConnectionAliveness
Only these allow you to channel your creative Soulforce.
Only these allow you to grow, heal, and evolve as an artist.
Only these allow you to touch lives with your art
Only these allow you to help those around you grow, heal, and evolve.
Only these allow you to master your art form in a way that matters to a world in need.
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Inspiration, healing, connection, and aliveness are the true purpose of the arts.
They are the hallmarks of true masterpieces.
They are what make a work of art, and the path to artistic mastery, meaningful.
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So, how do you create meaningful art?
It must feed the hunger in both yourself and in the world around you.
The world doesn’t need more maximization of money, technology, status, and power. In fact, this is what’s destroying our society and planet.
As civil rights leader Howard Thurman said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Instead, ask what makes you come alive. Because the world needs people who have come alive.”
In other words, *go make art that makes you and your world come alive.* This is the only kind of art (and artistic mastery) that is truly meaningful to the healing, growth, and evolution of our society and planet.
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Question: Examine your definition of artistic mastery. How central are the cultivation of inspiration, healing, connection, and aliveness to that definition?
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Want to go deeper? Get a FREE excerpt of my new book in the link below!
“Soulforce: How to discover your artistic purpose, create more freely, and make art that matters” explores these topics in depth and gives tons of practical tips.
