5 Uncomfortable Moments That Will Strengthen Your Career
When you started out in your professional career, maybe you imagined those defining moments that every artist hopes to attain. Maybe you daydreamed about being able to live off your art, accepting a prestigious award or collaborating with other professional creatives you admire.
Those may feel like the defining moments to your career, but there are some other moments that make much more of a difference in your ability to create art.
The moments that will make the biggest impact on your career can sometimes be uncomfortable, but they are extremely valuable. They may be unseen by the rest of the world, but you know them when you’re in them. Here are five uncomfortable moments that, if you stick them out, will help you become a better artist:
1. Dealing with creative block.
Every artist deals with this from time to time. It is inevitably part of the process of creating something out of nothing. How you deal with this creative block determines how much art you allow yourself to make. The discomfort of sitting down at the blank page and having nothing to say is all part of your creative growth. Forcing yourself to stay with the process, even when you’re at a standstill, means that when inspiration strikes you’ll be ready to take action. Creative block requires you to have patience in your process. This patience will carry you through the ups and downs of making art.
2. Being unsure about your career trajectory.
Many times, an artist will start out pursuing one thing and end up on a road they could have never expected. This uncertainty can be frustrating. Being a creative doesn’t work like an office job where you clock in and out, know you have benefits and can predict where you’ll be in forty years. Creativity in not a linear path. When you are struggling to define your next steps, but allow yourself to be open, you are investing in the professional skill of adaptability.
3. Not being good enough, yet.
It is highly uncomfortable to have a disconnect between what you want to make and what you can make. Ira Glass talks about this as a gap between our “killer taste” and our “work not being that good yet.” If you take the fact that you are not yet where you want to be and use it to discourage yourself, you will absolutely never fulfill your potential. However, if you’re able to push through the discomfort of not being good enough yet, work harder every day to grow and do as much work as possible, you might just fulfill that potential. Don’t think you have to be a genius right away. Keep working, especially when you know you have the potential to do better.
4. Failing in a big way.
It is painful to fail, but it is perhaps the most important uncomfortable moment you can face. If you aren’t really taking a risk, you’ll never fail. Those risks are important teachers in understanding your work. Failing means you tried and learned something valuable. The discomfort of failing is necessary for you to learn the lesson your art needs to develop. Without being in that pain, the lesson wouldn’t impact you so much. Pay attention to your failures and grow from them. They will serve you as you make better and better work.
5. Going rogue.
There may be a time when the traditional ways of making your art do not appeal to you anymore. You may decide that it’s time to strike out on your own and try something completely unorthodox. Those moments are thrilling, but they’re also very uncomfortable. When you don’t have a template telling you what to do, you may find yourself second-guessing yourself at every step. The discomfort of going rogue and the ability to do it anyway is essential to finding your own unique voice. Going your own way may be unsettling at first, but if you stick with it, you may find more strength and intuition on that path than one that’s already been tread.
