The Problem with Resolutions

Think creatively about artistic challenges if you want to do one this year. Create your own. This collage is from an article by Anke Humpert in The Polymer Arts Winter 2014 – Boundaries issue. 15 artists created a piece based on a voted on set of limitations – an organically inspired pendant with a 3 color palette. The real challenge came when, after finishing their pieces, she asked them to make the same piece again to see what they would change. Could limitations or repeating your creations be the kind of thing to gain the skill and growth you are after this year?

Here we are, looking out towards a new year, and the most common question people probably have is some version of, “What do I do different this year?” This may manifest as a list of resolutions or a new art business plans or just a verbal pronouncement of productive intentions that only the cat will hear (and will actively work to thwart too, so maybe don’t tell the cat. The dogs, though, they got your back!) There is just something about a new year that begs for a new start, or new restart, but there is a question you should ask yourself first—are you ready to set goals and challenges for yourself right now?

There is definitely something motivating about joining so many others in committing to New Year’s resolutions, but they need to be the right resolutions for the right reasons and either this needs to be the right time or you need to be realistic about when you can start.

Where Your Motivation Comes from

One of the biggest problems with New Year’s resolutions, and the reason so many of them fail, is that most people set goals that are motivated by something external, such as the opinion or expectation of spouses, parents, or friends, or they are ideas that come from the culture or society we are entrenched in. Doing something that is simply expected of you versus it being something that you are personally driven to do makes a huge difference in being able to accomplish the goal and to have it be the fulfilling and helpful change in your life that you hope it to be. So, if your goals are not something internally motivated, something that comes from a core source of desire or inquisitiveness, it’s going to be very hard to make them a priority and to get through every step required.

Determining if something is internally or externally motivated, however, can be very difficult. External expectations and our desires are often so intertwined or so bred into us that it is hard to tell the difference. But there are a couple questions you can ask yourself about any goal you want to set that can be helpful in this regard:

Would I still want to go after this goal if no one else knew or had the opportunity to approve the results?

Do I feel excited, physically, and emotionally, at the idea of working on and achieving this goal?

If you can say yes to both these questions, then you can be more certain that this is a goal important to you personally which means you’re more likely to be successful at it. I know the first question won’t always make a lot of sense for some goals such as “I want to make more time for my spouse,” or “I want to get my art into 4 galleries this year.” Reaching either of those goals would be noticed and commented on but just imagine that no one gave you supportive commentary in connection to those goals. Would you still do them?

Artistic challenges are popular New Year’s resolution that helps get people focused and productive in the studio. If you’re thinking of doing a challenge but maybe on the fence about it, ask those two questions. For instance, if you make a goal to create one pair of earrings each week this year, ones that you never post and no one will ever see, would you still do it? If the only thing that motivates you is the thought of the comments and hearts you will receive when you post them on social media, you may not be going after that goal for sustainable reasons and it could even inhibit your artistic growth if, for instance you change your focus from jewelry to wall art midyear – you may feel inclined to complete the challenge even if your heart isn’t in it.

The Question of Timing?

Also remember that you don’t have to jump on your goals on January 1st. Maybe take a week or a month to recover from the holidays and get yourself into a good position to take on your goals and resolutions. You can write down those goals, give yourself a realistic start date, and put that on your calendar, as an alarm on your phone, and tell at least 3 people about it. You’re sure to start it as planned that way but you won’t have to get crazy with it on day one of 2020.

You also need to be realistic. Can you really do one pair of earrings a week along with everything else that you plan to do and that life demands of you in the coming months, not to mentionthe entire year? Maybe it would be better to create a pair every other week or once a monthor maybe after you catch your breath from the holidays a bit at least. Or you might simply set aside one hour each week to work on a challenge but don’t scold yourself if you don’t create a pair of earrings in an hour or if you want to change the challenge to something else. You can simply put in the work for that hour and see where it takes you.

Embracing the Best of Teachers: Failure

I also think resolutions are hard because of the way people look at failure. If you gave yourself a weekly challenge and then didn’t hit it one week, the fact that you didn’t meet the challenge perfectly can make you feel that the rest of the challenge is pointless. However, not meeting a single small step toward your goal does not cancel out the value of what you’re trying to do as a whole. You aren’t doing it just to be successful every single step of the way, are you? Its a journey not a test. You don’t lose points if you mess up here and there. In fact, the more you trip up, the more you’ll learn so, really, failure is like getting extra credit.

Keep focused on why you decided to go after this goal to keep “failures” from getting you down. If you are doing it to learn, explore, or stretch yourself, then the occasional failure should be expected and welcome as opportunities (yeah, I cringe at that over-used corporate term too but it’s also true) to assess why it happened and find better and easier ways to do it well. Failure is where most of our change and growth happens.

Determine the Why

The one piece of week, or month or day challenges give you easy guidelines but keep in mind they may not be the thing that you need to be spending your time and energy on. I would suggest that you start with an end goal and then determine what kind of challenge or process you should go through to accomplish that. End goals are not “I want to make 52 earrings this year.” That’s the work you do to reach your goal, but your end goal is what you get out of going through that process.

Let’s be honest – you are not going to make 52 earrings unless all that work is going to do something beyond having a growing stack of earrings. Yes, possibly, it’s going to give you a huge portfolio of earrings that you can take to specific gallery or show to get in there and sell them. If that’s the case, your end goal looks to be about increasing your sales through a specific venue, or to have the stock necessary to get you in so you can gain the recognition that being in that gallery or show would bring, thus helping you grow your art business. Do you see how the process and your end goal are different?

Decide what you want and work back from there. Create a challenge as unique and specific as you need it to be for what you are trying to accomplish. That might sound like a tall order, but stick with me this coming month on the blog and with the new Virtual Art Box  project and I’ll help you figure that out. A major part of the Box project is to help you create challenges that makes sense for where you want to go creatively and why you create as well as providing you with a community of artists all in the same boat, with myself and other contributing artists to help guide you and coach you along the way.

For the month of January, the blog will be filled with art and ideas around challenging yourself as a kind of nudge to get you thinking about what you want to accomplish, improve, or explore this coming year. You can make your first goal to determine what it is that you yourself truly want to accomplish. That’s an important first step that will ease you into the new year and give you time to find the right challenge, if any, that you need.

I’m in This With You!

Okay … I know I said I would keep these short over the holiday weekends, but I have a lot to say on this subject and I am contemplating this all myself. What do I want to accomplish for myself in the year and months coming up, in my art, my business, and my writing? Also, what about my work-life balance and my health? I can’t work on those all at once so part of figuring out what I might want to set a goal for will be prioritizing. My inherent challenge, no matter what goals I might come up with, will be checking my workload to stay well while doing the “smart” things needed to keep a business growing. I do really want to create more and write more fiction but recognizing and working within my limitations are huge. I know that’s probably a goal for quite a few of us enthusiastic creatives. We just have too many ideas. We can make that a kind of umbrella goal though, to keep checking in our commitments and be open to changing them as needed.

So, how about this to start us out: Just be kind to yourself, be your number one priority so you have the energy to help others, say no to doing things that don’t feed your heart and soul, and give yourself permission to relax and enjoy the moment.

I, myself, am starting there.

And with that, I want to wish every single one of you a very joyous, inspiring, and wonderous new year!