Feeling the Love - What is Success? 2/25/18

Many of us would envision ourselves being creatively successful as possibly when we see our name on the marquee.  Or, having a show at the local gallery or maybe being the guest dancer in a big production.  Possibly being rich and famous, written up in newspapers, magazines or on TV.  These are definitely big measures of success but only obtainable for a small percentage of people. 

For most of us, our measure of success needs to be something else.  It needs to be something that makes us happy and brings satisfaction and fulfillment inside.  It’s not how many likes we get on Facebook.  It’s not the fleeting oohs and ahhs from friends.  Of course, these comments are nice but they don’t stick around and usually we get needy again pretty quickly as to our self worth.  I’ve noticed that many highly successful people, those on TV and in the movies seem to have a high need for external approval.  That begs me to question, is what we think of as the highest levels of success really success at all?

We all see that many people who become rich and famous don’t seem to be any happier than most of us, in fact, many seem to be less happy.  They can no longer go out in public as they will be bothered by someone, fans, press, etc.  Many rich and famous people seem to have more problems with relationships, drugs and alcohol and many live short lives because of it.  Fame seems to bring even more problems.  No doubt most stars have some talent but are they more of a product pushed by the media and greedy corporate executives?  At some point a new product comes along and they are history.  Nashville says you’re only as good as your last song.  Is success like the flash of a falling star in the night.  Many still crave fame and don’t handle the new kid on the block well.  Also are you truly successful if you can sing or dance, but can’t manage other things in your life?

So this leads to the question, What is success?  Are we still a success if no one knows about us or what we do?  Are we a success if we don’t make a lot of money from our pursuits?  Are we a success if in some areas we excel and in others we are a complete failure?  Are we a success if we don’t hold high degrees or haven’t mastered our craft?  Is being successful different for each person?  I think we have to deeply contemplate and answer that question for ourselves. 

For myself, this has been a frustrating question for some time but I think I’m finally starting to come to terms with it.  As a high achiever, there’s always been a lot of frustration because in my world there is always someone more talented, prettier, wealthier, etc.  Being highly accomplished in some areas doesn’t translate over to easily achieving competence in other areas.  Actually for me the areas that didn’t come easy was even the more frustrating because I thought they should be easy to achieve. 

Some people seem to be very accomplished in one area and that’s where they seem to stay, but for me I’ve always had a lot of interests I pursued.  I’m one of those jack of all trades people and master of none types.  I also have this left brain right brain competition always going on.  I was highly accomplished in being an independent business entrepreneur and painting, but I struggled with my music production.  I was just average with singing and playing a musical instrument.  I found my life in the arts many times frustrating as there were always people better and I had high expectations of myself.  I did not acknowledge that many of these people learned their instruments early on and have had fifty years of playing somewhere, while I was doing tax returns and budgets for businesses. 

Many times I was extremely hard on myself and didn’t give myself credit for the areas I did excel in.  The things I excelled in sometimes became back burner items as I moved on to remedy my weaker areas that weren’t good enough.  This usually kept me on the treadmill of not being good enough overall.  Then I would feel needy and crave approvals from others.   There were times when I was criticized, especially when it was not constructive and that was agonizing.  I didn’t have the confidence to let someone’s casual misspoken words roll off my back and it resulted in me feeling very angry.

 But one day I realized that no matter how much approval and feedback I received it did not remedy my inner most feelings of being inadequate in that area and maybe even overall.  I wasn’t finding the joy and the satisfaction in my pursuits.  I didn’t have the inner confidence I needed.  I do know it’s possible to find the love.  I know when I paint a really good painting and I frame it and hang it on the wall, I feel that sense of happiness and satisfaction.  But the things I struggle with, I feel like a failure and sometimes I’m a total failure because I haven’t excelled at everything.  It’s a high hurdle and an impossible unrealistic standard to live up to.  It has been a life long struggle, but I’m starting to come to terms with it.  Awareness of the problem is half the battle and changing the narrative is a big part of the resolution.

So my new personal measure of success is to

1.  Seek inside for my personal approvals first.  Do I like it? 

2.  Learn to self-critique before seeking it outside. 

3.  Develop my confidence, acceptance and satisfaction inside.

Also, it’s good to be aware of those on the outside who may be approving and evaluating your creations.  Many times approvals from others don’t really tell us if our creations have the quality we might desire.  Many times people who chime in do not have the expertise to tell us much other than their preference or what they personally like.  People who may criticize your work may also have the same problem in that they are not qualified to evaluate what you have done.  Many people can’t give you helpful constructive criticism, it’s more of their preference or bias.  Also many times in the arts, you run into frustrated  creative people who delight in fending off their competition.  It’s good to know who you are dealing with and avoid certain more negative persons.  I remember a famous quote not exactly but something like this “before you make an appointment to see a shrink, make sure you aren’t in fact surrounded by crazy people”. 

At a certain stage though you do have to take some risks to find out more about your work and to see where maybe things could go.  Otherwise, like me you have a lot of framed art just hanging on your own walls.  I was on a social media site and feeling frustrated with my songwriting not going anywhere, I took a song I had composed and wasn’t happy with, just the lyrics that again I didn’t feel the lyrics were very good and I put them out there and offered to anyone else who wanted to put them to music.  The site has a lot of better musicians than some sites I had been on and I was shocked to find out they thought the lyrics were actually quite good.  Three different guys did their take on the song and I found it quite interesting and eye opening.

Just recently I was contacted by a music professional a teacher, music magazine writer and composer who has produced some albums who was interested in the lyrics I was putting out and said he thought my lyric writing and music was pretty good.  I was getting better feedback than I had been giving myself credit for, so sometimes you need to put yourself out there to learn more about where you’re really at.