Reframing Failure

You're working on a piece of art, a draft or design, something you are excited about, and suddenly it hits a wall.

The proportions are wrong, the sentence doesn't land, and your internal critic screams, stop.

Not just for today, but for good.

Want to welcome you back to Create Art Podcast.

I'm Timothy Keem o', Brien, your host, and this season we're exploring the sustainable shift.

Now, last time we talked about slow seasons, but you can embrace a slow pace and still freeze up when you hit resistance.

Today, we are asking why we stop and how to stop treating a bad draft as a verdict on your soul.

Failure is in the stop sign.

It's raw data.

Let's talk about how to use it.

Well, welcome back, friends.

Again, Timothy Keem o' Brien here, head instigator for Create Art Podcast, where I bring my over 30 years of experience in the arts and education world to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume.

Now, we've all been there, and you're working on a piece of art, draft design, something you were excited about, and suddenly you hit a wall.

Proportion's wrong.

Sentence doesn't land.

Concept feels hollow.

And in that moment of friction, that internal critic screams, stop.

Now, if you've heard my episodes in the past, you know that I'm all about taming that inner critic.

I think the inner critic is a good thing.

But when we tame it, we're going to be doing a lot better.

So that inner critic, a lot of times is gonna tell you to stop, but not just for that day.

That inner critic is going to tell you to stop for the entire project.

It tells you that failure, that this specific failure is fatal and final.

So we're going to confront that critic and we're going to ask difficult questions.

And the main one is, why do we stop?

But more importantly, how do we learn to reframe that failure?

But not as a stop sign, rather as the essential data required to keep going.

Now, last episode, we made the case for a slow season.

We talked about rejecting, you know, that end of the year panic, and this is coming out in October, before Halloween.

So that panic is setting in for some of us right now.

Some of us it's going to hit in November, and others it's going to hit in December.

But even by embracing a slow, deliberate pace, you could still freeze up when you encounter this kind of resistance.

Now, in my work, I see this constantly.

There's professionals who are otherwise really resilient, paralyzed by the fear of creating something bad.

And folks conflate A bad draft with being a bad creator.

And let me tell you, I've written probably 800 poems.

Most of them are pretty bad, and I don't share them with people.

But let's be a quiet professional here for a moment.

Let's be quiet.

Let's get that mindset of being a quiet professional.

Failure isn't personal.

It's operational intelligence.

Now, if you've been in a military operation, if they don't achieve success, their objective, you don't declare the entire mission invalid and go home.

You analyze the feedback and you're going to ask, what data does this mission provide?

And your creative work is no different.

A failed.

And I want to use big quotes there.

A failed sentence is just data.

A painting that doesn't work, again, data.

The failure is only final when you let it become the verdict of your identity.

When you say, I'm a failure, no, the sentence failed.

It didn't work with the rest of the manuscript or that brushstroke failed because it doesn't work with everything else going on in this painting.

It's not you that's the failure.

It's not the whole painting that's a failure.

It's just this one aspect of it.

Now, failure only becomes final and fatal when you let it become a verdict on your identity.

And this is precisely why we're doing the one project challenge.

We're working on one quiet thing, not on the public stage specifically, so you can practice failing without the fear of exposure.

And you need to learn to fail safely so we can learn to succeed sustainably.

So let's talk about how to stop talking about or taking failure personally and start using it as fuel.

So let's go ahead and reframe failure.

When we stop, it's usually because we're looking for a green light, a sign that says, this project is perfect and we're safe to proceed.

But creativity doesn't work that way.

It's a constant stream of yellow and red lights.

And every red light, every failure, is simply information telling you to adjust your course.

Now, if you're currently stuck on a project, I want you to try this exercise.

Try it this week.

Take that part of the work that you absolutely hate, the part that makes you want to stop and isolate it.

Don't try to fix the whole project.

Just ask one question.

What is the specific piece of data telling me now?

It might be telling you that your foundational skills need some practice.

Great.

That's something you can do.

It might be telling you that the scope of the project is Too large.

Okay, let's cut it down a bit.

It might be telling you that you need to step away and take a rest for 24 hours.

Just walk away from it for a day.

Now, this isn't a reason to stop, it's a reason to adapt.

And I really want you to reclaim your practice from the fear of failure.

Because failure is not a verdict, it's intelligence.

It's data.

If you like the whole military operative thing, yes, it's intelligence.

So again, let's reframe that failure.

Let's make it something that is working for us, that is giving us information rather than stopping us, and just by a simple reframing of an idea, a reframing of failure.

Don't call it failure, call it data, call it intelligence, call it whatever you want.

I think you're going to find that it's going to help you with your process.

And that's what we're here to do at Create Our Podcast.

So I want to thank you for your time.

Thank you for listening.

If you've got something out of this and you want to share it with a friend, by all means, go ahead and share it with a friend.

There's ways to share the podcast through your podcast app of choice or if you're on the website, share the website with a friend.

I'd love to hear about it and possibly feature it in the show or you know, if you've got some interesting failures that you've ran into.

And again, we're using the quote air quotes of failure.

Love to hear those too.

Reach out, let me know what you're doing, where you're at.

Alright, that's all I have for you here today.

I want to thank you for joining me here on Create Art Podcast.

Now go out there and tame that inner critic.

Don't let it call you a failure.

Create more than you conceal and make some art for somebody you love.

Even if it's uglier, even if it's failure.

Go create something for somebody you love yourself.

I'll talk to you next time.