Written by: Beryl Hedger, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Fear is a funny word. It can keep us safe from the big bad boogyman and real danger like crossing the road in front of oncoming traffic and it can stop us from taking our passion and love for our creative side and turning that into a profitable business.
Is your mind and artist perfectionism keep you stuck in a world of fear?
How we think and feel can paralysis us from taking a step into the world of business.
Some artists believe that we have to be perfect in our creative endeavours before we create a real business from what we love to do and produce.
Our brain and our artist perfectionism can create stories and doubt in the mind of our worth in the world. We keep repeating over and over again, are the things we create what customers want to buy from us?
I call these circles or do loops of perfectionism running loose in our brain.
This perfectionism can create fear in many different forms that sometimes we can see and sometimes it is the stories in our subconscious.
Some of these fears are about the fear of failure and rejection or not measuring up to others' expectations.
These fears can be crippling to how we think and how we act, especially in a creative field like art.
Every day we are putting our heart and soul into a creative project that we have been asked commissioned to produce and for the world to see and possibly be judged by. This can create paralysing fear in our minds about who we really are and do we deserve the business we are building.
This fear and our vulnerability can have the ability to stop a perfectionist in their tracks, making it nearly impossible to make or design anything at all because it’s not perfect.
My Early Years
In my early adult life, I spent many hours looking, fighting and studying to create a career around my art but always putting it second to making money because I thought my art wasn’t good enough yet for the world to see.
The few projects that I did sell, I never made much money because I didn’t charge what I was worth because I felt embarrassed that they weren’t quite good enough yet. They weren’t perfect.
Over the years I have mentored artists who have felt this way many times in their creative life. It is a limiting belief that they believe is true to them.
Through these thoughts and emotions of their subconscious, this fear in their mind has stopped them from taking their hobby in a business and create an income from what they would love to choose to do every day. The fear of failure and self-worth.
I know this because, with over 53 years of experience as a Master Textile Artist, I too have thought this way. It wasn’t till I met my husband and the support that he gave me, that I realised that I did have a real talent and did deserve to make money from my creative works and the thing I loved most was that I realised I had the power to have art cake and eat it too.
I had created a business from my passion.
Over the years I have worked with and mentored many creatives who thought if they made a business out of their hobby, they would always be chasing a dollar and their dream of a profitable art business would never be achievable in their lifetime.
They would be giving up their dream and passion. They were stuck in the mindset of I should only do this as a hobby, not a real business because I don’t deserve to make money.
They created a mindset around everything has to be perfect before they are allowed to have a business. They were paralysed with their perfectionism.
Understanding what is Paralysis Perfectionism and how it stops a Creative Person from creating new works?
A Quick The Definition of Perfection paralysis or Paralysed Perfectionism …
When you simply can’t start or finish a project because you are so concerned that it won’t be exactly right.
In an artist's mind they think there are only 2 options to consider:
If I start and it’s not perfect I have proof that it will never be perfect or
If I don’t start at all and then there will be no one to judge me and tell me, I told you so
Looking through the eyes of artists, I hear many fear stories like this.
An Example:
Think of teachers in the classroom, they see stories like this all the time in their students that the students are paralysed with fear that they will get the assessment wrong and therefore fail.
As artists, we have carried this fear into our adult life.
We are scared that no one will like what we do or buy from us. This will prove to our brain that we should have kept our art as a hobby and not created a real business, just because. We might love what we do, others won’t.
These thoughts build up in our minds to create a paralysed feeling of perfectionism of not wanting to finish a project and moving on to the next one, just in case.
Time to check your brain, are you stuck in the perfectionism circle in your business?
7 things that I feel are at the heart of being stuck in the perfectionism cycle …
Not moving forward and being stuck on your current project
Not telling anyone what you are working on through fear of rejection and being ridiculed or laughed at.
Not posting on social media because you cannot find the words to explain what you are doing or fear of getting a bad comment.
Not connecting or reaching out to other creatives because you feel they are better than you and you don’t deserve to be and will never be at their level.
Not pricing your work because you are scared someone will question what you are charging.
You cannot take compliments because you feel embarrassed about what they say and feel that you don’t deserve the praise. You feel your work is not that good anyway.
You feel overwhelmed with all the social media platforms and just don’t know what to post so you don’t post anything. And you just don’t want to build a website because people will be able to see what you are up to and might say something hurtful.
Now is Your Time! Time to build your Creative Business
Let’s start with rebuilding your thoughts and feelings about what you think perfectionism is and how it will serve you moving forward.
Where do we start?
We need to change the storyline that you have been telling yourself over and over again about what it means to you about creating a business from the hobby you love. It’s about re-wiring your brain to see things differently about the creative endeavours that you have in your in life.
Now is the time for you to choose a different path in life.
Perfectionism can keep you stuck and motionless. Do you want to stay stuck and frozen in fear or start to tell yourself, it’s the best I can do at this moment of time and it is good enough to sell. There is no such thing as true perfectionism because you will never get anything finished if you think that way.
I’m not saying that in 12 months' time you are not going to look back over your work and say, I could have done better if I knew then what I know now. You are and you probably will.
The reason for this is that you will learn and you will grow personally and in business. You will see things differently because you know more about what you are creating.
You will have the benefit of time and you might have a better technique that helps you create things in different ways.
A Story from my Past
I remember reviewing my old university work.
It was my final assessment for one of my subjects in my Masters of Graphic Communication. I spent hours and hours hand creating this piece of work. I was so proud of what I had achieved at the time but it took far longer than it should have because I was worried it was not good enough to pass.
If I didn’t hand up the project, I would have failed and would not have received an A+ for the finished project. I would not have grown into the artist I am today if I would have let my perfectionism stop me and as time passes we will all see our work differently.
This is how we invent new things in our creative processes. Personally, I can see how I could improve what I had created back then but with time I have learnt new things over the months and years to help me design things very differently now.
The thing is, I am designing and creating new things because I’m not choosing to be paralysed with fear over the things I create and now I sell more projects to the world.
Now is Time for you to Decide and Choose your own Adventure …
Do you want to be paralysed with fear of not getting it exactly right or do you want to learn by putting yourself out to the world and seeing what will happen? Stop the fear of perfectionism failure.
Growth and moving forward is about levelling up and improving.
I can reassure you, that sometimes even I will look back on the past works that I have sold and say I could do better today with what I know now but the most important thing is the hobby that I love to do, has morphed into a thriving, growing business that I get to enjoy every day of my life and make a living.
Mindset is a very powerful thing. Whether I am mentoring an artist or designing for a couple for their wedding, I get to choose if I am going to let my perfectionism stop me from thriving and growing or freezing.
It is now time for me to go and create something new for Beth and Jason, one of my gorgeous wedding couples, that wants me to design something perfect for their upcoming wedding.
Beryl Hedger, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Beryl Hedger is the go-to person that helps artists who would like to get paid for their art.
She specialises in uncovering the mindset around the fears and limitations artists put on themselves when it comes to making money from their expertise.
She is a Master Textile Artist and Certified Master NeuroCoach with decades of experience in helping creatives reach their potential by helping them showcase their creative endeavours to the world.
