Every creative has moments in their career that are moments of celebration, moments of pure excitement. And usually, when I talk to artists about those moments, they think about the big career milestones: that huge award that they won or were nominated for, the incredible review they received, the prestigious fellowship they were awarded, the amazing project they won. These are all big, wonderful career events in your life as an artist businessowner that absolutely should be celebrated. But they aren’t the only moments that deserve celebration. The problem with focusing only on those big, external indicators of career success is that they are almost always things controlled by other people, which by definition means they are rare and unpredictable. Instead, I want to encourage you to focus on celebrating the small wins in your creative life. After all, doing the work is the win. Let’s discuss.

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Hello, thriving artists, and welcome to Episode 52 of the Starving Artist No More podcast! I’m so excited you’re here with me today to discuss the power of the small things in our creative lives.

We’re going to get to that topic in just a moment, but before we get there, I want to give a quick reminder to the audiobook narrators in our audience about the Thriving Narrators Retreat that’s coming up very soon in Cincinnati, Ohio. This retreat is taking place August 22-25, 2024, and we’re going to be gathering in my favorite neighborhood in the entire city, Clifton, which also happens to be the neighborhood where I live. For the four days of the retreat, we’re going to take over the Clifton Cultural Arts Center, which is a brand new facility that just opened last month, and we’re going to have workshops, seminars, masterclasses, panels, and small group discussions that are all about both the business and the craft of audiobook narration. I’m hard at work behind the scenes putting together these sessions and making sure that we’re addressing what you as narrators really need to grow and thrive in your career. I am so excited about this event, and I’m excited to share my neighborhood with all of you who attend. All of the details about the retreat are available on my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, and of course if you have any questions, please reach out to me. You can also do that via my website contact form. I’m so excited to see you there.

 Ok, let’s turn now to the main topic of today’s episode: deciding what to celebrate in your life as a creative entrepreneur. Last week’s episode was titled “Celebrations Matter," and that pretty much sums up what we talked about: why celebrations are important, why they matter, to your creative business. Not long after that episode released, one of you sent me an email asking what to celebrate. Here’s what this artist said: “I know that celebrating the big career milestones is important, and I do that. But in your episode, you talked about small rewards. What does that mean? Are you saying that I should I be celebrating more than the big career landmarks?”

My answer to that question is “absolutely yes!” There is so much more than just the big things in your life as an artist businessowner that is worthy of celebration. Absolutely celebrate the big things – the awards, reviews, prestigious projects or collaborations, etc – but celebrate the little things, too.

Personally, I celebrate every task that I complete! When I finished writing the outline for this podcast episode, I pulled out my red gel pen (which is the color I use in my daily bullet journal to indicate writing and podcast-related tasks), and I put a big checkmark next to the task of “write this week’s podcast,” because let me tell you, checking items off my to-do list gives me a big mental boost! Yay for a burst of dopamine! Then I did a little dance party in my office, further celebrating that task being done, before sitting down in my booth to record the episode, which is what I’m doing right now. And once the recording work is done, perhaps I’ll make myself a cup of tea. I’m an avid tea drinker, and a delicious cup of herbal tea is the perfect thing to celebrate an afternoon task that’s well done. I’m going to celebrate every single one of those small little wins, because they absolutely are wins.

I talked a lot about the power of small steps back in Episode 40 of this podcast, so you can go back and listen to that episode if you’d like more information on why small steps are so very powerful in your life as a creative entrepreneur. But in terms of celebrating those small steps, every time I celebrate a small little win, I’m helping myself to think positively about my work. And when I’m thinking positively about my work, I’m more excited to do that work. I’m engaged in actively improving my skills, and I’m focused on problem-solving through difficulties that I face. Celebrating even the smallest of steps keeps me energized and joyful about the creative work that I get to do.

At its most basic, I celebrate even the tiny little things because doing the work is the win. The big awards are nice, and the reviews and recognition are amazing, but the true win comes in the act of creation itself. Doing the work is the win.

This makes me think of a Twitter thread posted last year by writer Billy Oppenheimer. In this thread, Oppenheimer tells the story of Villanova’s game against UNC in the final of the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship. It’s a bit long, much longer than I normally quote in these podcast episodes, but when I was thinking about how to summarize Oppenheimer’s post, I kept coming back to what he wrote as saying it best and as succinctly as possible. So, here is Billy Oppenheimer’s recounting of this game and what we can learn from it:

Late in the 2016 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, Villanova blew a 10-point lead. With 4.7 seconds left, UNC hit a 3-pointer to tie the game.

Villanova's head coach, Jay Wright, called a timeout, and as his players walked to the huddle, they were all saying the same word: “Attitude.”

“It's the most important aspect of our program,” Coach Wright explains in his book titled, Attitude. “We wear 'Attitude' wristbands. And when we break a huddle, we say '1, 2, 3, Attitude.'”

The test of Attitude, Wright taught his players, is: “Where is your mindset after something bad happens to you?” Where is your mindset after you blow a 10-point lead? Where is your mindset after your opponent hits a 3 to tie the game with 4.7 seconds left?

“When I looked into the eyes of our players,” Wright writes, “I saw no anger or regret. No one bemoaned [the UNC player's] 'lucky shot,' or that any of our guys had failed to stop him from grabbing the pass that led to that shot, or anything else.”

Instead, “they were all saying, 'Attitude. Attitude. This is what we do. Attitude. This is what we do.'” With this mindset, the players returned to the court.

Villanova's Kris Jenkins inbounded the ball to Ryan "Arch" Arcidiacono. Arch dribbled up the left side of the court, crossed half court, cut right towards the 3-point arc, where he underhanded a pass to Jenkins, who caught the ball with 1.3 seconds left, and, in perfect rhythm, jumped then released the ball with 0.6 seconds, and hit a buzzer-beater to win the 2016 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship.

Takeaway 1:

A primary indicator of physical fitness is recovery time. If you are doing all-out sprint intervals, for instance—people who are physically fit recover from one interval to the next faster than those who are not physically fit.

“So then, what is mental fitness?” the mental performance coach Greg Harden likes to ask. “Mental fitness is about recovery time,” Harden says. It's about, as Coach Wright said, where your mindset is after something bad happens to you. After something bad happens, people who are mentally fit recover faster than those who are not.

Takeaway 2:

Just after Kris Jenkins hit the buzzer-beater, Coach Wright famously barely reacted. Before his guys went back on the court, he explained, “I processed all the potential scenarios.” Most likely, the game was going to go to overtime where UNC would ride their wave of momentum and win the game.

“No matter the outcome,” Wright continued, “because of the way our players responded after UNC tied the game ["Attitude. Attitude. This is what we do."]—I felt like they had the greatest lesson in life. I felt like that was an accomplishment that would follow them through their lives.”

Ryan Holiday once told me, “You have to get to a place where doing the work is the win and everything else is extra.”

Wright got to that place. He had done the work to instill in his players a mindset, he said, “that they would carry with them for the remainder of their days on earth. … In that sense, I knew we had already won.” Everything else was extra.

• Billy Openheimer, on X (Formerly known as Twitter)

Oppenheimer wraps up his post by sharing one final quote from Villanova Coach Jay Wright: “The fact is, none of us control what happens to us in life—but we do control our responses to those circumstances...no matter how tough it gets or how much of a challenge you face in the final 4.7 seconds of a game.”

I hope you are as inspired by Oppenheimer’s recounting of this game as I am, although I do recognize that this recounting might have been hard to listen to if you’re a diehard UNC fan. But I hope the lessons shine through even so. Yes, Oppenheimer’s post uses a sports situation to make the point, rather than something from a creative or artistic industry, but I actually think sports analogies transfer really well to the arts. Creating a career in sports, like in the arts, relies on continually growing your skills, and both industries are often drastically impacted by things that the practioners can't control.

Villanova couldn’t control how well-prepared UNC was for this game, just like you can’t control how well-prepared the other actors are who are auditioning with you for a role you really want, or the other musicians who are auditioning for the same orchestra seat, or the other artists who are applying to a specific art show. You can’t control the work your colleagues do or don’t do.

Villanova couldn’t control the refs, just like you can’t control the people proctoring your audition, or the reviewers who are writing about your work, or the music directors who are making decisions about who to select for a given role or a certain position.

As I talked about back in Episode 17 of this podcast, what you can control is the work you do, how you react. You can control your attitude and your mindset. For Villanova, in the situation recounted by Oppenheimer, they went back on the court after the other team scored, and they did the work. They didn't let the other team's tying shot shake their focus. Yes, they blew a 10-point lead, and yes it looked like they were going to lose the game, but they went out and did the work for the final 4.7 seconds anyway. And even if it hadn't gone their way, they would have still "won" by taking action with focus and intention despite the awful circumstances. Doing the work is the win.

The life of a creative entrepreneur is one in which you don’t control the outcome. We all work in creative industries where skill matters so much, but where the final results are so often out of our hands. In this kind of situation, what really matters isn't the final outcome; what matters is our attitude and mindset as we do the work. In truth, doing the work is the win.

For us as artists, doing the work might mean performing the 10th audition with the same focus and attention to detail that we did audition #1, even if we've not gotten any of those auditions in between. Doing the work is the win. It might mean reaching out to the casting directors on this week's list, even though we didn't hear anything back from any of last week's reach outs. Doing the work is the win. It might mean reaching out to five more indie authors this week, even though we've not gotten a contract from any of the last 20 we've contacted. Doing the work is the win.

And if we’re focused on doing the work with a positive attitude and an open and supportive mindset, then individual projects, and the outcomes of any single event, begin to fade in importance, and the act of creation itself becomes the reward, the celebration. The work becomes the win. Yes, we want to do our very best on every individual project. The outcome of each project does matter, but over the long term, what becomes so much more important is the body of work that we create. From a zoomed-out perspective, what matters isn’t any one single piece of art that we create or the outcome of any one audition or competition or project. What matters it that we continue to create. Over time, quantity of art created leads to improved quality of art created.

I talked about this concept a bit back in Episode 32 of this podcast, and I hope you’ll indulge me as I tell the story again now. Perhaps you’ve heard the story of a ceramics professor who divided his students into two groups. One group would be graded purely on the number of pieces they produced at the end of the year. A higher number of finished items would equal a higher grade. The other group of students would be graded based solely on the quality of their work. They would need to produce only a single perfect pot to get an A. Didn’t matter how many total pots they created throughout the semester, all that mattered was that they be able to submit a single perfect pot for grading at the end of the class.

At the end of the semester, the professor evaluated both groups as he said he would in terms of their given grades, but then he took a step back and, for his own purposes, evaluated the quality of the work before him. Without exception, the works of the highest quality all came from the students who were being graded by quantity. The quality students got stuck trying to make that “one perfect pot” and so didn’t actually improve their skills over the course of the semester. The quantity students had to create lots of pots and create them quickly, and they learned by doing. Their skills improved drastically because they spent the time doing the thing.

For the students, doing the work not only was the win – doing the work was the key to improving in their craft. We don’t control the outcome; we do control our mindset and our attitude. So let go of what you can’t control, and instead, focus on what you can control: doing the work.

I want to share an analogy that I use all the time in my coaching and workshop sessions. If you were a merchant in medieval times, sending out ships to faraway lands to trade and to bring back riches and goods, your job was to send out ships. You would hire a ship and a crew, and buy the merchandise to stock that ship with goods for sale, and then you would send out the ship on its journey. Those were all things that you, as a medieval merchant, could control. But you couldn’t control what happened to the ship after it left the harbor. Once that ship embarked on its journey, loaded down with all of your investments, it was out of your hands. You couldn’t control whether that ship was attacked by pirates, or whether it was hit by a hurricane and sank, or whether the crew mutinied and threw the captain and all your merchandise overboard, or anything else about that ship’s journey. There was no GPS to track the ship and tell you where it was and how it was going, and very limited communication via letters. When that ship left harbor, you, as a medieval merchant, had to literally let it go. Because your medieval merchant job isn’t to worry about what happens to your ships. No, it’s to send out ships.

A medieval merchant who was focused on the right things spent 100% of their time focused on sending out ships. Hire a ship and a crew, fill the ship with merchandise, send it out, repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Because a medieval merchant who did that would be able to send out enough ships to beat the odds of disaster. Yes, some of those ships would go down to pirates or mutiny or inclement weather, but not all of them would. And a medieval merchant who sent out enough ships would eventually get some of them back.

Like that medieval merchant, you can't control which of the ships you send out will return to you laden with riches and treasure and which will never be heard from again. But if you send out enough ships, with enough consistency, and with a supportive and curious, inquisitive, open mindset as you do, some of them will return. Some of those projects you’ve been pursuing will come to you rather than going to your colleagues. Some of your marketing efforts will begin paying off. Some of your networking contacts will lead to exciting opportunities. If you send out ships consistently, if you focus on what you can control and do those things dependably, day in and day out, and if you let go of the rest, you will build a business that supports you and allows you to do work you love. Doing the work is the win.

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Thank you so much for being here with me today for this episode of the Starving Artist No More podcast. I hope the discussion today, and the stories and analogies I’ve shared, open your mind to finding joy in the work that you do, focusing on what you can control and letting go of the rest. If you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to subscribe to this podcast so that you never miss a future installment! And any ratings or reviews you care to leave for me would be much appreciated. Especially reviews left in Apple podcasts and Spotify do really help new listeners find my little corner of the podcast work. If you have a friend or colleague who you think might enjoy today’s episode, please share it with them. Sharing is caring! And if you have any questions or comments for me, or if you’ve got topic suggestions you’d like me to cover in future episodes, or if you’d like information about how you can work with me, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me via my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, which is also where you’ll find all the information about the Thriving Narrators Retreat coming up in August 2024. Again that website is www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com. As always, a huge shout out goes to my husband, Arturo Araya, who does the audio engineering for this and every episode of this podcast.

Yes, absolutely, celebrate the big wins and the wonderful, enormous moments of your life as a creative entrepreneur. But don’t forget to celebrate the small things, too. So often you can’t control those big, external success factors, but you can control how you do your work. You can control your attitude and your mindset, and that is where you will find the real success. The real win lies in the work day in and day out, finding joy in your creative process. I can’t wait to see what you create.