The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
#REFLECTIONS
A career in the creative world is an inconsistent wave of ups and downs. Often it seems like you have very little to no control over the trajectory of your own destiny. You hold on, hoping that big break comes your way. Sometimes you get a chance to look back at everything you have or have not accomplished. If you have been lucky you may have caught that break and now you get to ride a wave of success for as long as that wave carries you. In this industry you can be hot one minute then cold the next, so enjoy the ride as much as you can when you are up. However, a lot of the time is spent fighting your way up. Which often leads to a large amount of downs. It is easy to get caught up in the downward spiral, lack of opportunities can lead to frustration it might even end with your management decided that they no longer want to represent you, that is to say if you are even represented. All these knocks can take their toll and you may even begin to question yourself, are your talents good enough? Often the bad patches can smooth themselves out and something good brings your confidence back. But what if it doesn’t. What if this low lasts months? The next thing you find a whole year has gone by and what have you got back to look on aside from 12 wasted months and a really ugly emotional journey. If you have these bad months or years it is good practice to really look back at these moments in time and break them apart. It’s easy to lump everything together into the negative, “That was a shit year” etc. Though if you manage to actively reflect upon these periods you can begin to break this big ugly beast down into smaller parts. Some horrible of course, but some might be average, and some might even have positive and good there just waiting for you to take a moment to enjoy your growth.
#PERSPECTIVE
You want to be fighting in this industry for a long time and if the negatives take the forefront it is a quick and surefire way to bitterness and resentment for the lack of opportunities that come your way. It might be hard to find positives with all these negatives taking hold, but there is always a silver lining as they say. Those low moments are often where resolve can be found. There is a positive in all of the lows, you just need to adjust your perspective. What was a year of failures if you glance over the top could be the exact thing that turned your career around within the next three years. Look deeper, you’ll find small positives, like the fact you haven’t quit yet, or that you learnt a new skill set that can be used in your craft (even if you haven’t had the chance to put it into practice just yet). These little positives can make that really rough period not so bad. The more little positives you can take away from the hardships, will help propel you when you go to catch that next wave. It is very important to not judge any of the positives or compare your journey to others. Being a creative means a constant flux of highs and lows and navigating your way around to ride more highs then lows. If you need you could even write down a list of every little positive moment that you can think of or remember. Writing this list could help if you are struggling to find anything good. Force yourself to come up with at least ten positive moments.
#FOCUS
Once you have found the positives the next step is using them to help you move forward. Any sign of progress is better than none. The fact that you have been able to identify these positives is a great start with your change in perspective. This in turn will hopefully lead to a potential thought process that is more specific. The same concept as taking each day as it comes. You can look back at each day or even hour as a seperate moment instead of clumping them together under the one umbrella. Breaking these moments up is imperative to focus on the positive that has been so well concealed by the blanket of depression. If your dreams are not going as planned, this can have an impact that carries over into personal life and can lead towards certain depressive tendencies, which in turn makes it even harder to see the smaller positives. The quicker you can identify these positives you will soon be able to remove those constant ugly thoughts that act as an anchor weighing you down. It takes time to break this consistent negativity, however, as you continue to focus on the little wins, you will feel a change coming. The ugly isn’t so bad, in fact there is often more good mixed in then originally thought.
Harness all those good moments more often, give them the power over you and grab your board and ride a new wave towards success. With this focus you will begin to see more highs begin to naturally enter your energy sphere. You usually only get what you put out. So as that positivity begins to thrive it will act as a snowball effect. Until the bad and ugly are no longer a focal point but just a point in time that happened and no longer anything to dwell upon. You will wake up the next day fresh and not restrained by the past.