How to Change Your Behavior

I’ve been writing about the purpose of my work and it distills down to this: helping people get their creative work into the world. That’s the hope I have for the book I just wrote, Artists: Prosper!

But as we all know, “getting your creative work into the world,“ though sounding simple, is not. There are lots of barriers.

The first one is the one you hit when you decide to change your behavior: the idea that what you’re doing now is WRONG, and this new behavior change will be RIGHT.

Getting your work into the world is right—that part is true. But the reasons you struggle to get your work into the world aren’t wrong. 

They’re Logical. 

Okay, maybe not logical, but they make a kind of internal sense. 

The main reason you/we don’t get our work into the world is trauma. Mostly from childhood. It doesn’t have to be catastrophic—it can just be well-placed criticism from people who matter deeply to us.

We Aren’t Kids Anymore

But those memories are imbedded in our bodies, and they emerge when we think about risking making something that comes from our creative souls, and showing it to someone else. 

The First Step to Behavior Change

Is this—recognizing that what you’re doing now, making art but not finishing it, watching Netflix instead of writing your new song, ignoring the person DM-ing you asking about prices for your art, makes some kind of sense. It’s not WRONG. It’s based on outdated information and an expired frame of reference.

It’s time for an update.

Your work matters,

Love,

Christy

PS: Here’s the link to the book. It will help you see how to get your work in the world. While acknowledging that if you haven’t been able to yet, there are logical reasons.