Who said that living a creative life was too hard?!

it is incontestable that the creative industries are fraught and success can be illusive. For some, it is a brilliant landscape of creative expression, personal fulfilment and financial abundance. And for some, it is perpetual striving for very little success.

Success does not come from just dreaming and wishing, from working your arse off, fingers crossed this one will be the one-that-changes-everything, and it does not come from raw talent alone.

Creating long-term personal and financial sustainability is a whole other game.

I have seen too many good, talented, tenacious, relentless, smart, brilliant people, throw all of themselves into a project as though life depended on it. I have seen them be pummelled. They crash and burn. Mostly they get up and have another go. Often, they don’t – most film directors, as a mere example, will only ever direct one film. They get burned, and leave.

This crash and burn cycle is not conducive to sustainability, nor to sustained gradual learning and growth, honing of craft to become truly great.

In the Creative Industries you are the heart of your creative business. To attain business success/ creative career success requires long-term, functional, healthy thinking, planning and focus, and it all starts with you and your mindset.

Living a successful creative life is so possible.

Success requires strategy and a functional mindset, and it requires a healthy connection to self and others. It is so much about relationships – you’ve heard the adage, “It is not what you know, it is who you know”!

The Creative Industries are fundamentally collaborative, require teams, demand that we influence others all the way along the value chain to come on board our idea, our dream. We pitch at every stage. We need to be creative, flexible, certain. We need to get others to believe in our project, our venture, our idea, and to believe in us.

If it is so darn hard, why do it? WHY choose to live a creative life?

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WHEN you succeed in a creative career or business you can have an amazing life with artistic expression, massive influence, the opportunity for constant learning and growth, working with amazing, interesting and inspiring people, always feeding your curiosity, never a boring day … life can be exciting, rousing, stimulating, always changing, always something new. And you can make a decent living – some even buy that yacht and live their material dream, while making a difference in the world.

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YES! So – why don’t we all just to THAT?

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Oh yeah, reminder – they say it is so hard. Here is what ‘they say’, and mostly they are right:

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The creative industries are tough. High rates of failure. Artists are asked to work for free, too often. Insecure income. Freelance/gig work. Heavy competition. Insufficient community and mutual support. Funding body complications. Access to broadcasters. Access to distribution. Access to funding. Fickle market. Zero sum game of money.

Personal. Insecurity. Lack of confidence. Diminished sense of self-worth.

Self Esteem. Procrastinations. Limiting beliefs. Creative blocks. Massive burnout. Fear: of failure, of the future, of asking for help. Of humiliation. Of embarrassment. Overwhelm. Lack of support. Poverty. Too much magical thinking. High rates of low self-esteem, fear, anxiety. Lack of control operating in a subsidy system. We are witness to shocking statistics of suicide & poor mental health in creative industries.

Holy Sh*t – so why would you do it?

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Oh, that’s right – because

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“A creative life is an amplified life” Elizabeth Gilbert

Everything is better when you exercise your own creative expression. You are at the same time taking care of your own needs and loves and joys, as you are contributing to the world – (the true reason we are all here, our highest purpose is contribution – but shhh, most people don’t want to hear that).

I believe your highest calling is to live your creative life

The ‘hard’ world as described above, is as it is. You can try, at great personal cost, to change the systems, the world, the industry, other people …?but the most effective and certainly efficient thing for you to work on, is yourself. Yourself is the only place where you have true power and control.

That’s where I come in.

After decades working in the screen industry, then after doing a Masters in Screen Art and Business running courses for a Creative Industries Business School I could see a huge gap: Human Skills. I was seeing craft/ skills education and training, and business skills training – but where were the courses to teach surviving and thriving on a human level, a place to shine light on HOW to be in order to get the successful creative life?

I spent the next 3 years training in life skills at Australia’s biggest coaching school. Then, after industry consultation spent another whole heap of time building a course specifically for the creative industries to address you in the world as it is, so that you get to live your amplified creative life.

This course will give you the skills to survive and thrive in the world as it is. Sure, you can hope for change, but to be resilient, also plan for things to stay the same, while also planning for perpetual change that sits outside of your control. There you have the definition of resilience in uncertainty.

If any of this resonates with you, if you are curious to know about the Successful Creative Foundation Program … reach out to me.

I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to hear where you thrive, where you are challenged. If you’d like a chat with me about you, or about my program, please?book in a time in my calendar.

This is a brand new program that I will be running for the first time – it is informed by all that I have experience and learned, and the feedback from industry. Being the inaugural run of the program, I will be all-ears, open to where you are at and whether there are specifics that you need to get you to live your best creative life.

Please don’t be shy. Let’s talk about where you are at, what’s working, what’s not. And whether this program could be for you, or not. Either way, I’d love to hear from you.

Make a time and let’s have a chat – simply?book in a time in my calendar. Or reach out your own way.

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