When you picture someone who is a successful artist or creative, what image does that bring to your mind? Perhaps someone who has won lots of competitions or awards in your creative industry. Perhaps someone who is very prolific in their artistry, so you see their work all over the place. Perhaps it’s someone who takes on really high profile projects, performing with the best ensembles or working with well-known clients or having their work profiled in The New York Times or People Magazine. Exactly what those external success markers look like varies a bit from one creative industry to another, but they are all exactly that: external indicators of what our culture has deemed success.

On the other hand, what if you envision yourself as successful? What image does that bring to mind?

So many artists I work with come to me with the idea that I’ll help them achieve some of those external indicators of success, but that’s not actually where fulfillment lies for any artist. You can have all of those external success markers, and even more, and not be fulfilled by your creative work. And like I always say, I am all about helping you build a creative business that meets your needs, that fulfills you holistically. Not a business that meets someone else’s needs, or that meets the needs of a generic description of success, but your needs. Success is a very personal thing. It is not a blanket descriptor or a general state of being. Success is a state of being that is particular to each individual. In today’s podcast episode, we’re going to discuss your personal definition of success.

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Hello, thriving artists, and welcome to Episode 45 of the Starving Artist No More podcast. I’m Jennifer Jill Araya, your host for today’s discussion, and a creative entrepreneur myself, in addition to my work coaching artists on the business side of their work. I’m so happy you’re here with me today.

Before we dive into today’s main topic, about what success means to you, I want to make sure you know that today, the very day that this podcast is originally airing, on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023, I’m offering a FREE goal-setting workshop for creative entrepreneurs. It’s happening this afternoon, 4-6pm ET, and if you happen to listen to this episode right when it drops, then you can still register! The registration link is available on the Events page of my website, at www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com/events. This workshop, which I call the Dream Big workshop, is designed to help you craft goals and plans and strategies for your creative business that will allow you to take your dreams for your artistic work and make those dreams a reality. A goal without a plan is just a wish, and the Dream Big workshop will help you take those wishes and dreams and craft an actionable strategy to achieve them. And the workshop is completely, totally free. No strings attached. So if you are listening to this podcast before 4pm ET on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023 and you want to participate, just visit the Events page of my website to sign up. Again, that web address is www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com/events.

And if, by contrast, you’re listening to this episode way in the future and Dec. 5, 2023 has long passed, I still encourage you to visit my website. I’ll always keep that Events page updated with everything I have going on in my coaching community, so it’s possible that the exact opportunity you’re looking for is coming up soon. I hope you visit and take a look. www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com/events.

Now that I’ve shared that bit of news, let’s turn to today’s conversation: your personal definition of success.

Before we get too deep into this topic, I do have a quick disclaimer, or maybe a better word for it would be a quick confession. I really dislike the word “success” and all its permutations. Even though the title of this episode is “Your Personal Definition of Success,” and the word “success” is right there, I struggle with that term! I used it in the title primarily because it made for a pithy little title, and also because I hoped it would be a term that would grab your attention. But even though I’m going to use it a lot in today’s episode, I have a big problem with the term “success.”

I don’t dislike the word itself. In terms of its dictionary definition, “success” just means “a favorable or desirable outcome.” There’s nothing wrong with that.

What I do have a problem with is the cultural connotation that surrounds that term. Success to many people means more than that dictionary definition and also includes financial achievement, or accumulating wealth. It often includes becoming famous (or infamous) for what you do.

Discussions of how to succeed frequently include undertones, covert or not, of winning over other people, of succeeding based on how you compare to those “other” people who aren’t doing as well as you are and who are therefore failing, and you’re succeeding. Success in its cultural understanding is often a zero-sum game, a “fixed pie” equation, where you can only succeed if others fail. The connotations of success are soaked in a sense of jealousy and competition.

In short, success, in our society, has been co-opted to be a synonym for “winning.”

What’s more, success means different things to different people. Because of the multitude of cultural connotations connected to the word, some of which I just mentioned, when I talk about “success,” everyone who is listening to this episode is going to have a different conception of what I mean. When I’m teaching, or when I’m developing these podcast episodes, I try to use words and to frame concepts in a way that will make sense to you, my dear listeners and the artists I want to help. And using a word like “success,” that has a different meaning for every person listening, goes against that.

That’s part of why, if you do a word search for “success” in the transcripts of the past 44 podcast episodes, you won’t find the word “success” popping up very often. It’s a word I don’t like, and I intentionally avoid using it unless I can’t find a suitable synonym.

That said, success is still something that artists come to me searching for, telling me that they want to achieve success as a result of working with me. Success is something that the world tells us we should pursue.

And thus this podcast episode, to hopefully help you figure out what exactly success means to you. Because I can guarantee that my definition of success is not the same is yours, and yours isn’t the same as your friend who works in the same industry as you do, and it’s not the same as your other creative colleague over there.

Success is a personal thing, unique to you, your work, and your business. And so your path to achieving that success is also unique to you, your work, and your business.

Before you can be successful, you have to do the internal work to determine what success means to you. You have to know what you want and need from your creative work. You have to identify the unique characteristics of your own personal definition of success.

I recently read From Individual to Empire by Laura Bull, a wonderfully thought-provoking book by Laura Bull. Bull used to work at Sony Music Entertainment, helping shape the brand development of some of Sony’s biggest artists, and she now works as a freelance brand strategist. I actually enjoyed From Individual to Empire so much that I’m going to be hosting a book club study of it in 2024 as part of my Thriving Artists Academy, and you can visit my website if you’d like more information about how you can be part of that.

But the reason I brought up her book is not just to tell you how good it is, but rather to share some insights from the book that are directly applicable to our discussion today.

Bull writes, “When an artist asks where they should start building their career, my response is always, ‘I can’t tell you where to begin until you tell me where you want to end up.’ Every career is different, every timeline unique. Specific advice I would give to one client would not be sufficient for the next, because what makes one happy or fulfilled cannot be duplicated.”

Let me say that last part again. “What makes one happy or fulfilled cannot be duplicated.”

The characteristics of a career that will make you happy and fulfilled are as individual and as one-of-a-kind as you are. And only by doing the internal mindset work needed to figure out what success means to you as an individual can you have any hope of ever achieving it.

If you just go off of a default definition of success, if you just look at others in your creative industry and say, “I want what they have,” and then do what they’re doing so that you do eventually get what they have, will that make you happy? Will that bring you joy? Will that fulfill you personally? Creatively? Financially? Because even financial success varies from one artist to another. My financial needs living in Cincinnati, a relatively low-cost city, with a partner who helps pay the bills and with an adult daughter who works to pay her own college tuition, are very different from the financial needs of, say, an artist who is a single mom of three and living in New York City. Or from the financial needs of a single artist with no partner or children who is living in a rural, mountain community.

In short, your version of personal success, creative success, financial success, is not the same as the success that is right for your colleagues. But if you’re working to pursue a generic ideal of what you think success looks like, will that generic success actually give you what you want? What you need?

And if / when you do finally realize success, will that be success based on society’s definition of success? Or will it be your own?

My wish, my hope, my dream for each and every creative listening to this podcast, and for each and every artist who comes to me for coaching or workshops or seminars, is that they, that you, will find success on your own terms.

Take a moment to imagine what that kind of success would be like for you in terms of your artistic work. Get practical. If you could describe to me an ideal day, what would that look like? What would you spend your time doing each day? What kinds of projects would you be working on? Who would your creative collaborators be? How would your marketing efforts be connecting with your clients and customers in ways that feel meaningful and valuable to you? What kind of financial rewards would you receive for your work?

In practical ways, what does your unique vision of success, as it relates to your creative business, look like for you? Get that image in your head.

Now take a step back from all the detailed minutiae you were just thinking about. When you think about each of those tiny little details, what are the broad characteristics of that image of success that you just imagined for yourself? What ties together all the exact, practical ways that you brought to mind as you imagined yourself as successful? What do those elements have in common?

I’m not in your head, and so I can’t know your exact answer to this question, but I can tell you what ties those images together for me and for a lot of the creative entrepreneurs I work with: holistic fulfillment. For a lot of artists, when they think about what success looks like for them, they envision a situation in which their needs are met, particularly their personal, creative, and financial needs. Their souls are full of joy and creative energy, and their personal and physical needs are satisfied with abundance, and they have financial peace thanks to the financial rewards that come from their artistic work.

As I’ve already mentioned, what exactly constitutes fulfillment for you will be different than what constitutes fulfillment for me, and will be different than what any of your colleagues find fulfilling.  It is an entirely unique thing. My version of personal, creative, and financial fulfillment is not the same as yours.

If you’d like some guidance as you try to figure out what that fulfillment, what your personal success, looks like for you, I’d suggest listening back to Episode 10 of this podcast, which is titled “What You Need From Your Business.” This episode walks you through the deep, internal reflection needed to find your own personal definition of success, and I’ll link it in the show notes, or you can just scroll back to “Episode 10” in your podcast player.

But whether you listen to that podcast episode to help you figure it out, or whether you just spend some time thinking or journaling to work out what exactly success means to you, it’s important that you do spend some time finding that definition for yourself. Again, as Laura Bull said, “I can’t tell you where to begin until you tell me where you want to end up. … What makes one happy or fulfilled cannot be duplicated.”

If you want to find and enjoy success within your artistic work, you have to figure out for yourself what that success means.

Once you do that deep thought work and have an outline for yourself of what you want from your creative business, let go of any comparison. Remember, your definition of success is not the same as your colleague’s. So if you’re looking at your artist friend’s career and thinking that your career looks nothing like theirs, that’s actually a good thing! Your career shouldn’t look like theirs, because the success and fulfillment you’re pursuing isn’t the same success and fulfillment they’re pursuing. The definition of success that they’re working toward might be a definition of success that is completely different from yours!

Allow your own artistic path to be guided by what you, the specific individual artist listening to me right now, need from your business. Other people’s needs are not your needs. Sink into what works for you and what you want, not what someone else wants.

Letting go of comparison around your personal definition of success will be helpful, too, when you encounter setbacks, as you inevitably will. Just because something seems to be easy for someone else doesn’t actually mean that it is easy for them; that only means that it seems to be easy. And even if something that is difficult for you is easy for someone else, that doesn’t mean that something’s wrong with you or that they’re better than you in some way. It just means that the other person has different strengths and weaknesses than you have!

I’m going to quote Laura Bull one more time. In From Individual to Empire, Bull writes, “We tend to focus on others’ successes and not see the effort that went into it. Therefore we judge ourselves more harshly when we encounter insignificant setbacks. There are no overnight successes.”

Don’t allow someone else’s definition of success to take your focus away- from what you need to be fulfilled by your creative work. Let go of judgment, both of yourself and of others.

Instead, stay focused on the strategy that will allow you to make your definition of success a reality. Take action toward making that success come alive for you.

As you’re going through this internal reflection process, this is also a perfect opportunity to evaluate what you’re doing right now that isn’t working for you. Figuring out a workable strategy and following that strategy through to completion by putting into action is about more than what you want to do; it’s also about what you don’t want to do.

Every month, when I do my monthly review of my activities in my business over the past 30 days and make plans for the month ahead, I ask myself what I want to continue doing, what I want to start doing, and what I want to stop doing. And that last question is often the most powerful and the most revealing.

There is an opportunity cost when you do things that don’t align with your individual definition of success. If I’m spending time working on something that won’t actually get me closer to my idea of success, then that is time that is actively moving me away from that ideal, and it’s time that I didn’t spend in ways that truly matter to me.

In economics, opportunity cost refers to what you lose, what you have to give up, when you make a choice to do something else. For example, if I agree to narrate an audiobook the second week of January, I can’t record another book during that same time period. The opportunity cost of accepting that project is that I lose the ability to accept any other project that might record during that same time period. Saying yes always has a cost. In lots of instances, the cost of the yes is absolutely worth it, but that’s not always the case. And particularly when you are thinking about how to shape a strategy that will allow you to move toward your personal definition of success, knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do.

Once you’ve figured that out for yourself, take action. Turn your knowledge of your unique best strategy into concrete actions that you are committed to take that will make that strategy happen. Don’t let your strategy stay in the realm of the theoretical, or in the ether of great ideas that are out there somewhere. Actually do it. Take the action steps. Make that strategy a reality by the active choices you make.

As you’re taking those action steps and as you’re achieving the milestones you’ve set for yourself, celebrate every single step along the way.

So many artists I work with view the pursuit of success as something that is always in the future. They achieve some milestone or reach some goalpost they’ve set for themselves, but by the time they get there, they’re already looking ahead toward the next one. They are so focused ahead that they don’t even realize that they’ve accomplished something that they worked super hard to achieve. Essentially, their goalposts are always in the future, even when they achieve the things they have previously set as high priority goals for themselves.

Be happy now. Enjoy the fruits of your creative work now. Don’t wait for future success to be happy and joyful and creative.

In his TED talk about happiness, Shawn Achor says, “Every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a better one, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we’re going to change it. And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there.”

Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t move the goalposts. Don’t let happiness be on the opposite side of success. Instead, let happiness be with you right now, where you are today, as you walk your unique path and work out your individual strategy that will take you to your personal definition of success. Celebrate every single milestone you achieve before you look forward to the next step in the process. Find joy and happiness now, as part of the process of working toward and working within your personal definition of success.

Happiness and joy are not things that will happen to you “someday” when you finally achieve whatever success means to you. Rather, happiness and joy are the states of being you can experience right now, along the path toward achieving that level of success. Find joy in the journey to your personal definition of success.

Thank you so much for being with me for today’s episode of the Starving Artist No More podcast. I’m so glad you spent this time with me. Thank you. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider leaving a review for me with Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and those really do help new artists find this friendly little corner of the creative entrepreneurship world. And of course, if you have a friend who you think would be interested in this episode, or any episode of this podcast, please pass it along to them. Sharing is caring! A boatload of gratitude goes out to my husband, Arturo, who does the sound engineering for this podcast. Thanks for making me sound my best! And if you have any questions for me, whether that’s feedback or comments about this podcast, or ideas for future podcast episodes, or whether you’d like more information about how you can work with me, and about the workshops, seminars, and coaching opportunities I have available, all of that information can be found on my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com. I do hope you reach out to me. I’d love to hear from you.

Success isn’t a one-size-fits-all scenario. If you want to be fulfilled by your creative work, that begins by figuring out what exactly success means to you, doing the necessary deep, internal, reflective thought work. When you come to a realization of what success means to you, let go of any tendency toward comparisonitis. Comparing your career to someone else’s isn’t helpful because your version of success isn’t the same as theirs, and you could be working toward very different purposes. Instead, focus in on your own path and your own journey, putting those strategy steps into action. And through it all, celebrate every single win along the way. Don’t wait to be happy and joyful and creative and fulfilled until you’ve achieved what you call success; be happy and joyful and creative and fulfilled right now, as you’re walking on this creative entrepreneurship path. Find joy in the journey to success. I can’t wait to see what you create.