Artistic goals

What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

Becoming a thriving artist is the hardest personal goal that I have set myself. And I think I can distil down what the major challenges and roadblocks are and they are probably similar to you if you would also like to have a successful career as an artist.

First up my biggest obstacle is my mindset, self sabotage or whatever you’d want to call it. It comes from my youth and the notion of the starving artists really stuck with me. I needed to get a real job if I wanted to be successful in the world. I had no artists around me, so I believed that if I was to become an artist I’d be homeless, friendless and sad. So over the last few years I’ve been trying to move my mindset around this. And definitely interviewing other artists on my podcast definitely helps my mindset and my perspective of what a successful artist can be.

My other obstacle is time and for me to become a success or thriving artist I need a pretty tight schedule that I stick too and are disciplined with, so that means that I make art whenever I have time available or have scheduled whether I’m feeling it or not. And the truth is if I’m not feeling it, after the simple act of getting started I almost always get into it after a few minutes.

The other issue is understanding all the social media platforms, how they work and what ones are best to get my art into the world. Are you best having a presence on all social media platforms? Or are you best just focusing on a couple and really learning how that platform works and attempting to master it. Probably the latter, up until now I’ve been casting a broad net over all of them with only average success. So maybe it’s time to choose what platforms are working for me and going all in on them.

The only other thing apart from consistency and dedication is patience. I started in my mid forties so hopefully I’m not in the ground before I become a thriving artist. Either way, you need to make sure you enjoy the journey just in case you don’t reach your destination.