Link to full podcast: https://soundcloud.com/heelhang/the-artists-circle-values
"When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier." - Roy E. Disney
Prompt:
I’d like to identify and discuss our value sets as artists. These values can be as simple or as complex as you feel comfortable sharing, and if you haven’t taken the time before to think through what your values are as an artist, this is a great time! We have touched on values several times in previous weeks and I’d like to discuss in more detail value systems and the role they play in our artistic lives.
My answer:
Always be improving/growing
Stay curious and open to new things
Build community and give back more than I get
Maintain & Balance/Harmony
Thoughts and Actions:
Your values are the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work. They (should) determine your priorities, and, deep down, they're probably the measures you use to tell if your life and work is turning out the way you want it to.
You have to be honest about your values. Or, they just don’t work, infact, they can work against you… If your actions and products are incongruent with your described value set you will lose your credibility.
Achieving success with our work is not nearly as important as your definition of success. And that’s where your value set becomes important. If you have to lie, cheat and steal your way to success… suddenly, success becomes a bad thing. And of course that sounds extreme, but if we don’t remain true to a REAL value set, little by little… we can stray further from the work we want to make and the person we want to be.
Personal values are the measuring sticks by which we determine what is a successful body of work. For some people success means money, bookings, sales… while for other its means experiences. Its all defined by what we value.
When you value things that are outside your control, you essentially give up your life to that thing. We’ve talked about perfectionism…
In the same way you don’t notice your breathing until you’re asked to focus on it, we don’t generally notice the values that guide our work until we are called out or asked about them.
So, how can we define our values? Lets start with some questions:
What does a success look like to you?
What do you want from your practice?
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