someone needed to say this to artists

The thing standing between you and your best art, music, and writing is less about understanding your tools and more about understanding yourself. I spent the last few years studying creativity, and one of the oddest things I've noticed is that we have strange ways of getting in our own ways. I've listed four of them, four non-obvious things I wish I understood earlier about the mindset of making art. And once you see them in yourself, they're very hard to unsee. All right, let's dive right in. The first one sounds almost too simple, but it changed the way I deal with almost every single creative block I have. When do you feel stuck? Name what kind of stuck it is because saying I'm stuck doesn't really tell us much. It's like walking into a doctor's office and saying something hurts. It's like okay, what hurts? Because different pain needs different medicine. And creativity works the same way. Sometimes we don't have an idea and that's an idea problem. Sometimes we see the vision clearly but our hands can't make it and that's a skill problem. Sometimes we have too many good ideas so we choose none of them and that's a decision problem. Sometimes we know exactly what to make, but we're scared to be seen making them. That's a courage problem. Sometimes the art is fine, but we're just tired, and that might be a rest problem. Sometimes we've asked one piece of art to change the world, to make us famous, to change our whole life. See, I just listed so many different kinds of being stuck and they all require different types of medicines. But we usually prescribe the same thing, just more discipline, which is crazy because if you're tired, pushing harder can push you further away. If you're scared, learning more can become a smarter form of actually hiding. If you can't choose, the more options won't save you. So now when something isn't working for me, I just ask myself, what kind of stuck is this? Because naming the problem changes the problem. If I just think to myself that I can't create something, then I just hit a wall. But if I say something clear like I know what I want to say but I'm scared of saying it. That right there has a door. And now I know where to go. All right. And that brings me to the second idea and this one can completely change what you make. Find the rule that you are obeying without noticing it. Every creator has invisible rules like good photos have to look cinematic. Um, real songs need choruses. Uh, and artist needs one style or writing has to sound smart. Or even YouTube videos have to move every 3 seconds. If we obey a rule long enough, we stop seeing it as a rule. It starts feeling like reality. And many breakthroughs begin with one question. Who told you that you had to do that? The uh the hardest cage to leave is the one that feels like the whole world. You're actually watching one of my broken rules right now. YouTube tells me to cut more, to add more, to move more, to stimulate more. And you will notice in a lot of my older videos, I did just that. But at some point, I wondered, what if I just sit here? What if we just talk? Just talk about an idea so strong enough to earn your time. And look, I'm still growing and I'm pushing myself to create an authentic lane, but it all stems from questioning everything I've been told to do. So try this. Finish this sentence 10 times. Good art has to blank. All right. So good art or or good music or good writing, whatever your domain, just good art has to blank. Do it 10 times and then look closely at your answers because somewhere on that page might be the cage you didn't know you were in. Then ask yourself, what happens if I break this rule on purpose? Because some of your best work, it appears the moment a rule disappears. Oh, by the way, if you're interested in reading all my notes on creativity from over the years, if you want access to all my best ideas, I love to share them with you for free. Just tap the link in the description and tell me where to send them. >> Okay. Now, the third one is one I find a lot of creators doing without noticing it. It's this. Watch what comparison makes you do. Comparison isn't always bad. Artists have always studied artists. We need references. We need proof of what's possible. The question is, where does comparison send you? Good comparison sends you back to your work. Bad comparison sends you away from yourself. Good comparison says look what's possible. But bad comparison uh uh says become like them. And that to me is the difference. And social media makes it hard, right? We scroll past a thousand people doing what we love better than us. More followers, more views, better work, more money. You can destroy your relationship with your craft by simply doom scrolling and vet. So now I watch what happens after I see someone's work. Do I want to create or do I want to disappear? Do I feel curious or do I feel shamed? Do I do I want to return to my path or do I want to abandon it completely? Because inspiration that keeps making you hate your own work isn't inspiration at all. All right, this brings me to the final idea and also the one that's hardest notice. Learn your favorite way to hide. Artists don't only hide by doing nothing. We can hide while looking incredibly productive. Some hide through perfection, as in nothing is ever ready. Some hide through complexity, the work becomes so smart that nobody can touch what's underneath it. Some hide through productivity, always making, never asking if any if it even matters. Some hide through research. One more book, one more course, one more video. Preparing forever. Just, you know, for something that only actually making something can actually teach you. Somehow by starting over, you know, a new project, a new direction, a new idea. Because beginnings are pure possibility while finishing is commitment. Finishing means this piece becomes this instead of everything it still could have been. So every artist should ask himself what is my favorite hiding place. Mine is definitely research. I love learning. Learning helps my work, but I've had to learn the moment my curiosity becomes my shelter, becomes a point where another insight doesn't really add much to my work. I have to make something. And that's why I sit down every Thursday morning and I force myself to write my best idea about creativity. all my thoughts and research and studying from the week bundled into one easy to understand note. And that's the same note that I mentioned earlier if you're still interested and grab my notes on creativity. But essentially, if I don't do that, I'll be so focused on the ideas that I studied that I don't craft my own. And that's actually the part that gets interesting. Our hiding place often looks like one of our strengths. The perfectionist hides behind standards. The intellectual hides behind complexity. The student hides behind preparation. The prolific artist hides behind volume. That's why the hiding place works. It looks like us at our best. So maybe the question we should be journaling about is how do I disappear when the work gets too close? Where do I go? Do I edit, research, scroll, plan, start something new, make it more complicated? Because once we see where we hide, it becomes harder to hide there anymore. And I think that's what all four of these ideas are really about. Seeing clearly. We can understand every tool, every brush, every camera, every instrument, every piece of software. But eventually the instrument we need to understand most is our self. Our fear, our habits, our stories, our rules. Maybe that's why creativity is so strange. We think making the art is about making art. But after enough years, we realize the art has been making us. Every piece reveals something. Every block reveals something. Every obsession reveals something. Even even the things we avoid reveal something. One of the biggest lessons I've learned in this journey is that sometimes we need other people who can see the places we hide, who remind us what we're capable of when we forget, who get it, because they're also trying to make brave things, too. That's why I created the World of Creatives Collective. It's a private collective of creators from around the world who want to take their work seriously and who they become through it seriously as well. It's artists and writers and musicians and filmmakers and poets but not just people who make takes people who are willing to be shaped by what they make and want to shake the world too. If you've been watching these videos and thinking you wish you knew more people thought about creativity like this, that's probably a sign you should apply to the world of creative collective. I leave to the link to the application in the description below and I hope to see you in there. Stay creative, my friend. I'll see you in the next