What habits do you have? What are the things that you do automatically, on a regular basis? When we talk about habits, often the first place we think of is at bad habits we have – smoking, doomscrolling social media, staying up too late. But today, I want to talk about good habits. Epictetus, a Roman Stoic philosopher, wrote that “if you want to do something, make a habit of it.” So what are the habits that we want? What are the things we want to do, and how can we make those things habitual in our creative lives? Today, let’s figure that out together. Let’s look at the making of a habit.

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 Hello, and welcome to Episode 33 of the Starving Artist No More podcast. I am your host, Jennifer Jill Araya, and I am so happy to be here with you today to share with you some of the lessons I’ve learned in my experience as a creative entrepreneur and a creative entrepreneurship coach. Honestly, today’s focus of discussion – how to build supportive habits within your creative life – is probably the one foundational principle that has helped me more than just about anything else in making my life as an artist work. The actions you take over and over again make a huge difference! I’m excited to dive into this with you.

Before we get there, though, I do want to let you know about a free resource I have available for you on my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com. The one area of business that probably causes more problems for creative entrepreneurs than any other is finances, and that’s exactly where this resource is designed to help you. The guide is called “Say Goodbye to Feast or Famine: Three Financial Must-Haves for Creative Entrepreneurs,” and it will walk you through how to get a handle on the messy financial side of your creative business. If you struggle with your business finances – and let’s be honest, is there an artist alive who doesn’t struggle with business finances? – then I really think this guide can help you. All you need to do is navigate to my website and fill out the contact form, and the guide will be sent right to your inbox. That website address again was www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com.

Ok, now that I’ve given you that little nugget of information, let’s dive into the focus of today’s podcast episode: habits. I recently came across an article from a newsletter called Daily Stoic, and it really grabbed my attention. The headline reads, “We Are What We Repeatedly Do.” Wow. Just that one phrase was enough to light my imagination on fire and really get me thinking. We are what we repeatedly do. This is so true! If we repeatedly do something, it becomes part of who we are. The things that we do, day in and day out – in other words, our habits – eventually come to define us, for good or ill. We become our habits.

And it can work the other way, too. If I know my goal destination, if I know the thing I want to be, I can get there by first doing the things that represent what I want to be, and eventually, I will become that thing. It’s where the phrase “fake it till you make it” comes from. If you act as if something is true, as if you are something, long enough, then you actually become that thing.

Now, there are limits to this concept, obviously. If I want to be a doctor, I can’t throw on scrubs each morning and go to a hospital every day and expect to magically somehow become a doctor. But I can make a decision to be curious about medical topics and make a commitment to study and learn more about the human body every day, which would eventually allow me to do well on the MCAT and possibly get into medical school.

If I want to be confident, if I act as if I am confident on a regular basis, eventually that confidence will move from the realm of “faking it” into the realm of “making it,” and I will actually feel more confident. If I want to be kind, if I act as if I am kind in my regular daily interactions, eventually that kind perspective on the world will start to become my first instinct of how to respond, and I will be a kinder person.

If I want to be a thriving artist, in a lot of ways, my process for getting there starts by acting as if I am already a thriving artist.

I quoted the philosopher Epictetus in the opening to this episode. I want to share with you the bigger context of that quote. Here’s what Epictetus had to say about habits and acting as if something were true: “Capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by walking, and running by running… therefore, if you want to do something, make a habit of it.” If you want to thrive in your creative business, you have to make a habit of doing the things that thriving creatives do. You must act as if it’s already true, which will help make it actually true.

So, what does that mean? In super practical terms, what are the actual things you should do to act as if you’re a flourishing creative? Unfortunately, I can’t answer that question for you because the answer is completely and totally unique to you. In order to answer that question, you need to get self-reflective and figure that out. You need to identify what habits are going to be supportive for you.

Think back to your best work days as a creative: the days when you so easily dropped into flow and the work just seemed to come naturally. The days when you got your absolute best work done, and you were super proud of the progress you made on your project or super proud of the quality of your performance.

What do those days have in common? What did you do on those days outside of the creative process that allowed you to sink into your creative energy so fully and successfully? Maybe you got a good night’s sleep beforehand, or you did your work during a time of day when you as an individual are particularly awake and focused. Maybe you had a nutritious lunch or breakfast and it got your day started off well. Maybe you stretched and warmed up before coming into your studio in a way that allowed you to be fully in your body and able to create and problem-solve with innovation and excitement. Maybe you went on a walk in a nearby park and savored the natural world, which opened your mind up to the infinite possibilities in your work.

The actions that, for you, allow you to feel and behave as if you are already the thriving artist that you want to be are completely and totally unique to you. But I’ll bet that, if you think about it for a little bit, you’ll be able to identify what some of those actions are. Once you determine what habits are supportive to you and your creative process, then you can start incorporating them into your daily, weekly, and monthly routine. You can start acting as if, step #1 in making that thing a reality.

Before we go any further here, though, and start talking about the specific strategies for how to turn a desired action into a habit, I do want to acknowledge that your supportive habits as a creative entrepreneur encompass more than just the things that help you be a vibrant and innovative artist. The “entrepreneur” part of creative entrepreneurship requires that we take care of a lot of business-focused, administrative tasks in our daily and weekly life. That includes things like balancing your business checking account, sending out invoices, following up on payments, sending your marketing reach-outs, updating the copy on your website, managing your social media presence, handling project management tasks, etc etc etc. There’s a whole host of administrative tasks that simply must get done in your business in order for your creative business to function smoothly.

When you’re thinking about the habits that you want to incorporate into your life as a creative, I encourage you to think about these kinds of actions as well. The more you can make these kinds of administrative tasks habitual and easeful in your execution of them, the more likely you are to actually do them, and the more helpful they will be to you and your overall creative work. As you’re thinking of what actions are part of “acting as if” for you, absolutely include those refreshing, renewing activities that help you be your best self creatively, but also include the administrative tasks that must get done on a regular basis to keep your business running. Those two distinct types of activities are both supportive activities that help your business function, and you can make habits out of them both.

So, once you’ve identified the things that you want to become habitual and regular in your life as a creative entrepreneur, it’s time to make them habits. I’m going to give you a simple, four-step process here of how to create new habits for yourself, and I think these four steps should be enough to get you started. But if you want to dig into this topic more deeply, I highly recommend the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. I read it a few years ago, and it’s a book I come back to regularly. So very good!

To make a desired behavior into a habit, there are four starting steps: Make it small. Make it obvious. Make it automatic. And make it fun.

First, make it small. There’s a Chinese proverb that speaks directly to this: “The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” If you’re wanting to make running a habit, you’re not going to start by getting up one morning and running 26.2 miles. Instead, you’ll start by doing a run-walk plan for 30 minutes a few times a week and working up to those longer distances and the more regular running habit. Whatever your desired new habit is, whatever things you’ve identified as supportive activities that will help you and your business flourish, start small. Recognize that change is a direction, not a destination. Any and every small action you take will start building momentum. Start with the easy things, and let them build!

If the habit you’re wanting to form is to go to bed at a nice early time each night so you can wake up rested and at an early time to get your day started well, don’t try to immediately go to bed two hours earlier than your normal bedtime. Instead, move your bedtime up 10 minutes a night for two weeks, and you’ll suddenly have that two hour earlier bedtime. But you got there gradually. You started small and allowed yourself to build that momentum over time.

Don’t try to start all of your new habits all at once. Pick one new habit at a time and work on only that one new habit until it’s become settled and constant. Then continue that first habit, which is already mostly running on its own, while you add another one. We’re talking about moving one small stone at a time, not a handful and not an armful. Allow yourself to focus on one new habit at a time.

Habit-forming is not about making giant, drastic changes all at once. This is not a sprint. Habit-forming is about creating a long-term lifestyle that will continually support you and help you be your best for years to come. Small, incremental improvements are exactly what you’re going for here. Get yourself moving in the right direction. Start with the small stones.

Step two is to make it obvious. Another way to think of this step is that you want to set yourself up for success. Don’t sabotage your own habit formation. Going back to that same example of wanting an earlier bedtime for healthier sleep, during the two weeks when you’re moving your bedtime earlier, don’t schedule a bunch of late nights out with friends! Once an early bedtime is an established habit, having an occasional late night with friends won’t derail your larger healthy sleep habit. But having a few late nights out while the habit is still new will keep it from ever taking hold. As you’re getting that habit settled, help yourself stick to it.

Keep the habit you want to grow right in front of you, in the center of your focus. Write notes for yourself and put them on the bathroom mirror so you see it first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Set alarms on your phone. If the habit is that you want to work out more regularly, set your workout clothes on your nightstand the night before so you can’t miss them in the morning. If you’re wanting to set aside one afternoon a week to handle project management tasks, put it in your schedule and set notifications on your phone. Whatever your new habit is, eliminate any distractions, and keep that new habit obvious and central within your daily, weekly, or monthly routine.

Third, make it automatic. This step refers to what author James Clear calls “habit stacking” and what author Charles Duhigg calls identifying your “cue” for your new habit. Basically, you want to attach your new habit to something that already exists as a habit in your life. You’re using the existing habit as a cue for the new one, or stacking the new habit together with the old one.

Before you start actually trying to implement your new habit, take a moment for self-reflection. Have a bit of thought time at the beginning so you can figure out how this new habit will fit into your existing routines, your existing habits, and allow the new habit to piggyback on what you already do. You’re stacking your habits together.  If you want to build upper body strength by doing pushups daily, one way to habit stack the new pushup habit is to attach it to something you already do every day, like going to the bathroom. Every time you go to the bathroom, you could take 30 extra seconds and do a few pushups. Then, before you know it, doing pushups is a regular part of your daily routine.

Think back to those supportive actions that you identified that you want to become your new habits, either the actions that support you creatively or the administrative business tasks that help your business function. What existing habit do you have that you could pair with these new habits? Maybe you want to start doing your marketing reach outs every week. What other weekly tasks do you have on your calendar? What is something else that you already do every week? Perhaps you do your laundry on a weekly basis. Maybe the time that the washing machine is running can become your trigger, your cue, to send those marketing reach outs. Every Saturday, you throw your first load of laundry into the washing machine and then you pull out your laptop to schedule 5 marketing emails while that first load is running.

For each new habit, identify an existing habit that has the same cadence as the habit you’re wanting to add, whether that’s daily or weekly or biweekly or monthly. And figure out how you can build your new habit into the routine you already have surrounding that existing habit. Make your new habit automatic by making it part of something you already automatically do.

And finally, make it fun. As human beings, we will continue to do things that make us feel good in the end, even if the thing itself doesn’t make us feel good in the moment. So figure out how to make your new habit feel good. Find a way to make it fun.

I can tell you from personal experience that if something makes you feel good, you’ll keep doing it even if it’s hard in the moment. I love running. I’ve run four half marathons at this point and am already signed up for my fifth, coming up in October. None of those half marathons were pleasant and enjoyable all the way through. Running a half marathon is hard work! It takes a toll on your body, even if you’ve trained well for it. You develop sore spots, despite the creams and bandages you put on beforehand. You’ll get tired. But the elation I feel at the finish line, knowing that I’ve successfully completed such a difficult task, is the very definition of a runner’s high. And on mornings when the weather is awful and I really don’t want to go on that training run so that I can be fully ready to run the next half when the time comes, the lure of that incredible sense of accomplishment at the finish line can be enough to get me out of bed and into my running shoes and out the door. The habit isn’t always fun in the moment, but I know the good feeling afterward will be good enough that it’s worth it.

I can hear you telling me that making it fun is all well and good as a general principle, but how do you make balancing your business checkbook or paying your business bills fun? Well, maybe you can’t make the activity itself fun, but you can give yourself a reward of some sort that is reserved only for when that task is done.

I did this for myself in my personal life. Doing laundry is one of my very least favorite chores. I don’t like handling the dirty clothes, I don’t like the feel of wet fabric as I’m transferring clothes from the washer to the dryer, I find folding and putting away clothes tedious, and I especially hate the way that laundry is a never-ending chore, especially in a family with children and teens. In short, I hate doing laundry. And so for a long time, I avoided doing it, which comes with a whole host of problems all on its own.

A few years ago, I decided that I needed to get a handle on this laundry avoidance and find a way to make it a regular habit. I started by making it fun. I picked an audiobook that I’d really been wanting to listen to, and I told myself that I would only be allowed to listen to that audiobook while I was doing laundry. And it worked. I got all the laundry washed, dried, folded, and put away that week in record time! So I did it again. I picked another audiobook that I was only allowed to listen to while doing laundry. And again, the laundry almost miraculously got done. I still don’t enjoy the act of doing laundry, but laundry time is now my favorite chore time of the week. I put on my audiobook and get lost in the story, and laundry time is now fun. It’s now rewarding.

How can you add some celebration, some reward, to the new habit you’re creating for yourself? Maybe every time you finish your biweekly business finance session, you allow yourself to spend 30 minutes reading on your favorite park bench. Perhaps every time you make it through that week’s marketing email list, you give yourself time for a dance party to your favorite music. Maybe every time you clean up your studio or office space after a wonderfully messy creative session, you let yourself have a luxurious bubble bath before bed. Every time you do the thing that you’re trying to get yourself to do, that you’re trying to make into a new habit, celebrate the fact that you did it. Reward yourself in some way. Make it fun.

In all of this, I want to encourage you to give yourself grace. Making new habits is a slow process, with lots of starts and stops. If it seems like it’s just not sticking, take a deep breath, and allow yourself to try again. Every day or week or month is a new start. Continue focusing on what you want for yourself and your habits. Let go of the failures. Let go of the things you don’t want. Focus on the good, and start again, and continue acting as if it were already true.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with old nonsense."

Such good advice! Let go of the old nonsense. Yes, there will be days when you fall totally flat on your face with these new habits of yours. Forget it. Let it pass right by. Begin tomorrow as Emerson says, serenely and with too high a spirit to let that nonsense keep you down.

Focusing on what you want rather than what you don’t want can really help you let go of those inevitable failures. For example, if you tell yourself, “I’m not going to feel stressed today,” you can’t help but focus on the stress. But if you tell yourself, “I’m going to be calm and hopeful today,” that gives you a completely different outlook on the day. Even as I’m saying those two phrases, I can feel in my body the difference between them. The first, “I’m not going to feel stressed today,” brings you down and, frankly, makes me feel stressed. The second, “I’m going to be calm and hopeful today,” creates an uplifting and supportive energy in your mindset, which will help you actually make the day a better one.

I know I’ve said this whole episode that you want to have supportive daily, weekly, and monthly habits, and that’s true. You do. But a habit doesn’t have to actually be daily, or weekly, or monthly to still be helpful and supportive. If you have a “daily” habit that you actually end up doing 8 days out of every 10, that’s still really awesome. If you have a weekly habit that you actually end up doing 3 out of every 4 weeks, that’s still way better than never doing it at all.

Every day, every week, every month is a new start. Let go of the days or the weeks or the months when you don’t get those habits done, and focus on the ones that you do. Every time you complete your habit, you’re moving yourself in the direction of change. You’re having a positive impact on your work and your business. And that is pretty incredible.

Thank you so much for being with me today for this episode of the Starving Artist No More podcast. I hope you enjoyed this discussion of how to build supportive habits around your life and work as a creative entrepreneur. If you enjoyed this episode, I would so appreciate any ratings and reviews you feel like leaving me, and of course, don’t forget to subscribe so you are notified when new episodes pop up. If you’re interested in learning more about me and my work as a creative entrepreneurship coach, I’d love to hear from you. You can get more information and contact me through my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com. And as always, if you have an artist friend or colleague who you think might be helped by today’s episode, please pass it along to them. Sharing is caring! A huge thank you goes to my husband and audio guru for this podcast, Arturo Araya. Thanks for always making sure I sound my best.

The things that you repeatedly do in your life as a creative will, over time, come to represent who you are as a creative. So make sure that the things you do repeatedly are things that are supportive to you and your work. That starts by identifying what habits are helpful to you and will help your business flourish. When you are ready to make those actions into habits, be sure to make them small, make them obvious, make them automatic, and make them fun. And through it all, give yourself grace. Know that a most-of-the-time habit is just as valuable and as helpful as an all-of-the-time habit. Every day is a new day and a new opportunity for you to be your creative best. I can’t wait to see what you create.