Make Your Art No Matter What summary

After time, one of the biggest concerns for any artist is money. How do you make a living and still create? This question isn’t a paradox to solve. Rather, it’s a balancing act that you’ll need to work and rework throughout your life.

Although it’s challenging, stop tying your sense of artistic worth to the income your practice generates. This mindset can be toxic. You don’t need to make a living from your art for it to have value. Instead, reframe the idea of employment as the thing that funds your life, including your creative pursuits.

Employment is one major factor that affects an artist’s sense of stability but their relationship with money is equally important.

Money triggers strong emotions for many creatives, including anger, guilt, and fear. Often, financial literacy isn’t something we’re taught. Instead, we pick up bad habits that are difficult to unlearn.

Grief is an uninvited guest in life’s journey – ever-present, often feared, but deeply human. Yet like fear, grief isn’t something to conquer or avoid; it’s something to navigate. 

Grief is cumulative, sneaky, and relentless, surfacing in ways we might not expect. From irritability to profound sadness, grief can seep into every corner of our lives if left unaddressed. For many artists, creative work becomes a means to explore grief. Art can provide a path through it, transforming it into something tangible and meaningful.

Let’s go one more round into therapeutic territory and touch on the trifecta of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Because let’s face it, these are things that can lead to any number of creative hurdles.

The saying “don’t believe everything you think” might be simple enough to fit on a bumper sticker, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Thoughts can be tricky, often fueled by stress, hormones, or old habits. The fact remains, most thoughts don’t warrant a second glance, much less action.

Now, let’s move on to another subject that artists often want to avoid: marketing. For many of us, self-promotion is uncomfortable, if not utterly repellent.

We struggle with marketing because it feels like asking for something: attention, space, validation – all of which stirs up an uneasy fear of judgment. That’s a vulnerable position to be in for those who’ve been conditioned to believe that their voice doesn’t matter. 

In this final section, let’s create a bookend. We started out thinking about our limited time on earth, so let’s end on another existential note. 

After all, exploring your spiritual interior is a fundamental part of living a fully engaged life. For some, creative practice serves as their primary form of spirituality. Through the act of creation, artists connect deeply with themselves, their communities, and something larger – a process that mirrors the essence of spiritual practice.