I was watching Jerry Seinfeld’s Netflix show, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.  

This show is mostly comedy for me but there’s always some great business/personal development nuggets in there.

The episode I watched last night featured actor and comedian Garry Shandling.  

Garry and Jerry were talking about deceased comedian David Brenner.  Jerry was saying how sad it is that all of Brenner’s great comedy material died with him.

Gary was more focused on Brenner’s life and not his work.  Their exchange went like this:

Garry:  That [Brenner’s] material and your material is purely a vehicle for you to express your spirit and your soul and your being, and that’s why you’re fantastic. 

Jerry:  It doesn’t have any value beyond that?  

Garry:  It doesn’t have any value beyond you expressing yourself spiritually in a very soulful, spiritual way.  It’s why you’re on the planet.

In Jordan Peele’s interview with Oprah Winfrey (and in her book The Path Made Clear), Peele says:

“You know, I will continue to make movies—the movies that I want to see.  If I want to see it, I have to have trust that other people will.  And if they don’t, I have to accept that’s what it is.  But for me, the biggest reward of all of this has always been the fact that I get make another movie.”

When you do your art (teaching, consulting, training, coaching, painting etc.), you’re only brilliant at it if your inner and outer purpose is aligned.  That’s why Megan Mecedo’s Artist Paradigm question is so profound.

“The guiding question is not “What will generate a profit?”  The guiding questions is, “What’s worth doing even if it fails?”

When you are in TOTAL alignment with your purpose you will figure out how to make the money.  

All the hacks and short cuts most people preach nowadays usually short change you.  It keeps you away from the work.  The math doesn’t work because the work is everything!

The work takes you closer to bliss.

The work takes you closer to your goals.

The work fuels our purpose and fulfillment because (as Shandling said) it is the vehicle for you to express your sprit and your soul.

Don’t try to attain success.  DO the work and BE successful.  

I had that backwards for far too long.

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam

I live in Arizona, in the South West, U.S.  I was drawing a married couple at an event and we got on the subject of music.  I told them how much I loved it!  How music was initially my college major and how I pursued being a “pop star”.  She got excited!

She started suggesting ways I could still follow my dream.    She brought up The Voice, American Idol, and America’s Got Talent.  She mentioned ways I could go viral.  It was adorable!  Keep in mind when I was in college the Internet was barely a thing and singers weren’t uploading videos to YouTube and TikTok every five minutes.  

I told her thank you and that I appreciated the support.   But I figured I should stop her because I was a bit of a lost cause.  In the few years I pursued music I learned what I already knew about being an artist.  I told her, “I learned what it took to be a great musician and I wasn’t willing to pay the price.”  

That’s why I was cool with shifting gears and changing majors.  Happy about it, really.  To me it was like going to a bench press at the gym and loading it up with 400 pounds of plates.  I’d LOVE to be able to bench press 400 pounds but if I tried it today I’d become VERY familiar with the inside of an E.R. at a hospital.  

That’s why I sometimes laugh when people preach about monetizing doing what you love.   I LOVE music.  As much as I love art but I never studied it until college.  I think I wrote good lyrics but I was mediocre with the music part.  On the other hand I love art AND I was already good at it because I drew since birth.  Really.  My mom told I came out the womb and snatched the nurses #2 pencil and I started scribbling.

Ok, maybe that’s not true.  

But my point is this.  

All success has a price.  When it came to art I knew the price I had to pay to be good at it and I chose to focus on art instead instead of music.  By the time I was 18 I had thousands of hours clocked in as an artist.  By the end of my first college music theory class, do you wanna know how many hours of music I had?  One.

Find out the price you need to pay and do the work.  And you’ll find a way to love it.

https://www.adamstreet.net/

Adam