Years ago when I first heard Gary Vaynerchuk’s Do What You Love (no excuses!) talk on TED (and read his book Crush It), I proclaimed one thing…
Artists were gonna crush it online!
All that talk about passion, content creation, and doing what you love. Who does that better than artists?
Well, I was wrong. Sorta.
I struggled making money online. And I saw a butt load of other artists struggle too. Maybe I was missing something.
So I bought Gary’s second book Jab Jab Jab, Right Hook. Great book, but still, no fireworks.
Us creative folk are stuffed full of desire.
We generally have a vision for what we want for our art and we have imaginations that can rival any kindergartner.
So why are we not ‘crushin’ it’?
I didn’t get my answer until I read, How to Own Your Own Mind by Napoleon Hill. In the book Hill interviews Andrew Carnegie and he talks about the difference between imagination and Creative Vision.
And spoiler alert, they are NOT the same.
Carnegie said Creative Vision is an acquired ability of…
Recognizing favorable opportunities.
Embracing opputunities.
Moving with definiteness of purpose.
Removing limitations from your mind.
Using Applied Faith.
Going the extra mile.
And there are more…
Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” And he is right.
Imagination IS everything.
Until you try to SELL your art… Without the Creative Vision part, that’s where things fall apart.
That’s where most artists stall.
That’s where I stalled!
Check out this quote from Dr Joseph Murphy from the Miracle Power for Infinite Riches.
“When your desire and imagination are in conflict, your imagination always wins.”
That means no matter how bad you want to make money off of your art, if your creative visions isn’t dialed in, you can seemingly do almost everything right, and still struggle.
This is why Future Self thinking is so important. If you can use who you want to be as a measuring stick for how you act today, you active your Creative Vision. And your Creative Vision pushes you forward.
Instead of saying I can’t do that, or how can I do that? You look for WHO can help you do that. Then your imagination and creativity kick in and things fall into place.
On the other hand if you do NOT use your future self/creative visioning your imagination works against you. And as Murphy said no matter how bad you want it you’ll keep thinking of reasons why it won’t work.
Years ago before Amazon did same day Prime shipping, I read about it in Success magazine. When Bezos said he was working on getting products delivered the same day I thought he was…
Out.
Of.
His.
Friggin’ mind!
And then Amazon did it. Not everywhere. Not all the time. But they did it.
That was Creative Vision at it’s best.
Want to make more money while you sip on a Caramel Macchiato in Starbucks, warmly in your Supreme hoodie, while typing on your tricked out 16 inch MacBook Pro?
Master Creative Vision.
And reading chapter 1 of How to Own Your Own Mind wouldn’t hurt either…
Adam