We all want to be excellent at something. Our dream is the ability to do it like a professional, to find some people cheering us because we are great at a special topic, we want to make money with it and to use this skill for a breadwinning or even more. And I would argue that no matter if your dream is to become a designer or an illustrator, a scientist, a footballer, a musician, an entrepreneur or a social media star, the way you have to go through is almost the same.
The first step is to learn your craft. I wasn’t part of Leonardo Da Vinci’s first sketches but before he developed his ideas he had to practice the basics. And good news for everybody who is struggling with the learning curve of drawing, or is practicing the two-hundredth freekick on the training ground: That’s perfect, stay tuned and keep on.
But it becomes much harder when you reached the first milestones of your Creative Journey. At that point you are publishing the first work on a social network, you’re talking about the first business ideas or you’re having the first football matches. That’s a very intimate moment because you get feedback from others and are vulnerable for the first time. And we start to compare our creations and skills and some old thoughts are appearing.
During our time at school, we believed in the fact that there are creative and less creative people. Some students are great in math, a few others have a huge talent for art or languages and the rest is somewhere between with no hope to achieve something great. When we are grown-ups we often have the same strange mindset when it comes to creativity. “No … unfortunately, I’m a non-creative person”. And also when it comes to other skills like sport or logical thinking we have strong believes.
We start to compare our own stuff with our favorite Instagram artists which are multiple steps ahead. And that’s not the only thing because we are collecting all the best properties of our favorites, create a super-duper hero-artist and protect those things on us. And that’s not the end because we are trying to get better and better and compare our own results with the skill set of the super hero-artist. Do you think that’s fair?
Always search for fellows and not for follows
But what do we need in this situation? Is it wrong to put the work out at that moment? Of course not because we need other feedback for longterm growth. And here is one of my most important bits of advice I’m able to give you out: Always search for fellows and not for follows. Don’t misunderstand me at that point. It’s outstanding to create an audience but there are only a few people who are worth it to compare yourself with.
The moment you understand that’s a journey and everybody, no matter how good they are, is on his or her own journey it begins to work out for you. But the headline of this blog article isn’t: “How to get along with your personal struggle as an artist”. I would like to present you my most loyal fellow: Creativity! But why is creativity so important for me?
The democratization of tools and techniques hits everybody at that beginner or semi-professional level because we are searching for something called “the own style”. Furthermore, we forget that almost every possible style out there is still there. That’s a hard fact but we only need to open Pinterest or Instagram and we are going to be overwhelmed by a ton of great work. But why do we still try to focus that much on only one of a hundred options?
There is no need for a second, third and fourth Piccaso. We have YOU that’s so much more valuable in my opinion.
Your style includes so much more than only the way you hold your pencil. It’s more the way you see the world and think about daily life. It’s about your ideas that make people falling in love with your view. There is no need for a second, third and fourth Piccaso. We need YOU – that’s so much more valuable in my opinion.
And now we are in a completely different state of mind. We don’t need to complain about the algorithm because we are searching for more ideas. We don’t compare our current level with unrealistic expectations. We want to share our story with the world and we want to inspire others with creativity.
In the end, we all want to create that vision, meet new clients, work for awesome projects, reach that goal and create ideas that people remember for years. And that’s exactly the Journey I would like to go on with you. It would be a pleasure to be your fellow on this endless trip and to give the super-duper hero-artist a kick in the arse. Because we don’t need heroes in our life! We are going to have our own superpower!
Stay creative!
Samy
