Measuring Success. Tricycles vs. Try Cycles.
Creativity is the freedom of allowing oneself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep. ~Author Unknown
How do you measure your own success?
Is it the data you retrieve from your google analytics?
Is it the feedback you filter through from faithful foes and/or trusted friends?
Is it the one testimony of the one fan that was impacted and inspired in a life changing way?
Do you ever give yourself permission to revel for a little moment in that success or are you more prone to replaying the criticisms and failures? How long do you put up with condemning yourself under the flow of negative self loathing and self sabotaging barraging?
After a heated 1828 degrees of 6.44 hours @ cone 06 in the kiln, we had an explosive fatality. Approaching one of my favorite parts, opening the lid and peaking into the finally cooled batch of newly thrown bisque fired clay. Today as I was uncovering the last and bottom shelf of my Paragon, I met the disappointment of the premature death of little ramekin pot. It was most likely a violent way to go. This little guy was trapped in an inferno that was hot as hell and then with no escape, he was blown to broken shattered pieces.
In the moments of the anticipation of a dream that is finally coming true or the completion of a project that you’ve put your heart and soul into, how do you celebrate? Is finishing something, success in and of itself?
How do you emotionally process defeat, disappointment and disaster? Is the motivation of trying commendable alone in and of itself? Does the bravery that it takes to hope warrant a medal of honor? Is the trying and the attempting something worthy of a gold star sticker on mom’s fridge?
Art in and of itself can be viewed as an Unnecessary luxury. Creativity and artful living is an innate Necessary expression that has to be let out. Expressed. Creative Expression, if it is not let out, gets pressurized and the build up can be explosive. Picking up the broken shattered pieces of the mess of it, can perpetuate the muscle memory of that pattern of cyclic failure...or it also has the potential of creating the confidence and power of overcoming and pressing past the breakthrough threshold that can translate it into eventual success.
In the positive, the same is true for success. That pressurized build up of creativity and inevitable explosion of the expression of that creativity can also launch an idea, a project or an invention into a groundbreaking revelatory successful reality.
It is within our design to create and be creative. We innately were created to be reproductive and expressive. Sure we can dumb down into a zombie state of living, where we merely are expressionless drones, or we can come alive to the choice and freedom of walking out the essence of how we are naturally designed.
Artists and entrepreneurs have to be thick skinned to be successful. Artrepreneurs double their need for enduring strength to sustain against criticisms, difficulties and the normal roller coaster of experimentation. As an artist, it is helpful to translate failures into adventurous experiments. As an Entrepreneur risks can be rewarding and they are usually expensive. In both occupations, having thick skin helps endure the heated environment of being in the kiln so to speak. Choosing to process fears, criticisms and financial stretching as strength training and converting all of those explosive threats into helpful and productive creative muscle memory puts a redemptive edge on the discomfort of the process.
Getting back to what happens in the environment of a kiln. The heat and fire do the work of burning out impurities in the clay. The longer and hotter the pottery can tolerate the process in the kiln without being destroyed, the stronger the clay pot ends up being. The Strength is a result of the maximum amount of impurities being burnt out. If strength is your desired achievement then then how you with stand the difficulty of the process will determine the productivity and redemptive impact and value of the amount of strength built into the results.
It’s amazing that we need a reminder that creativity is not just art, but it is also problem solving and humor. It is also prudent to understand the difference of potential liabilities and freedoms that hang in the balance when stakes are high verses just playing around.
The margin of error is more gracious for expressions that are Unnecessary and Just For Fun. However when Apollo 13 was floating in space with no guarantee for return to earth, Necessity was not only the Mother of Creative Invention, but with the stakes so high, it was also a matter of life and death!
Here is the life line of grace that Ben Franklin threw out to us:
“Nothing Ventured is Nothing Gained.”
If we don’t give ourselves the freedom to creatively splash in the Unnecessary art of playing when the freedom is vast and the risks are low, we will not have matured our muscle memory to the Necessary mastery that is called for when the stakes are high and hinging on potentially saving a life or risking a FAILED TALLY.
This is where what we choose to yield to, fear or freedom, has the potential of creating the type of muscle memory that comes in handy and rises to the occasion in a moment of need. What we playfully practice on the tricycles of our childhood and our exploratory experimental laboratory of play time... has the power of productivity hidden in the muscle strengthening we build while processing our “TRY CYCLES.” Success when celebrated in merely the ‘trying’ eventually has the potential of putting us over the hump of yielding the negative results of failure and setting us free to sustaining the muscle memory strength of success.
“Freedom to play is the secret sauce to monetizing creativity.” ~kimiyaisms
I propose that the Primary Unnecessary Necessity here is giving ourselves permission to practice playful productivity and freedom to fail when failure is an option, that way when failure is not an option, we have done the due diligence of building the muscle strength it takes to produce success.
The Secondary Unnecessary Necessity is creating better measuring tools and deeper comprehensive analysis of what success and failure is. Intentionally weighing risk and evaluating choices between fear and freedom gives us data that can propel us into creating productivity and success, whereby the occasional failures end up not mattering as much any longer.
Choosing Freedom Turns Play into Productivity and Processes Failures into Successes.
Alchemy for the Artrepreneur:
By the way, when jewelry and clay is heated in a kiln to the temperatures required for optimal strength, they literally turn a burning hot RED color. One could claim that the process burns out all of the failures and leaves a result of nothing but useful substaince.
"Rubedo is a Latin word meaning "redness" that was adopted by alchemists to define the fourth and final major stage in their magnum opus. Both gold, and the philosopher's stone were associated with the color red, as rubedo signalled alchemical success." ~wiki
This is how you turn failures into gold. This is how a Philosopher's Stone becomes their Magnum Opus.
