I’ve decided to foray into the Blogosphere after lurking for a very long time. I’m planning to use this forum to explore Kaizen. That is Kaizen in the personal growth sense rather than in the business sense. About a year and a half ago my friend Anna turned me on to a book called “One Small Step Can Change Your Life – The Kaizen Way” by Robert Maurer, Ph.D. I read it and began to institute the ideas as I pursue the development of my art career. As a person who has been frozen in place by fear for many years it was a hopeful thought that I might be able to overcome it through small painless actions and begin to change the aspect of my life that I am most unhappy with. So far so good, change is occurring in small increments and mostly I don’t get too stuck!
The BIG GOAL is:
To become a fully functioning artist who is self-employed and able to support a comfortable lifestyle as good or better than the one I enjoy now.
This goal of course requires that I make money through art, craft or concepts, enough to quit the full time job I maintain now. I’ve been at this job for twenty years and I do believe this fits the definition of “Lifer” AKA “Hopeless” I could spend some time here beating myself up for this failure but life is too short…
As it stands at this moment I don’t have what it takes to make the big leap my goal requires, I’ve struggled over the years to find a means of escape. I have repeated the same comfortable actions to very little effect (I’m a champion Cont. Ed. Class taker) still there is a wall around my comfort zone that I have been unable to scale.
“Leap and the net will appear” is a wonderful idea but I’m not built with such faith innate to my nature. Enter Kaizen the idea is to break the large problem up into increments so small that they don’t trigger the overwhelming fears that hold one in stasis, so small they are painless and success is guaranteed.
To that end I’ve instituted the Small Act of Creative Realization Each Day (SACRED) a commitment to manage one small act of creativity each day.
Sometimes that is studio work; sometimes it’s about the business aspects of being an artist: networking, promotion, or finances and sometimes it is about play because that’s important too!
On this blog I want to share the process, the small acts and the big accomplishments and explore the ideas that are a part of it
Feel free to with your own goals, big or small, or just to lurk at will!
2 comments:
never read this first post until now- came across it via my blog stats page. looks to me as if you are succeeding towards your goal......i wouldn't call your 20 (lifer) years at a day job a failure though...it is just the path that led you to where you are today...becoming a self supporting artist/maker is a somewhat long process of persistence. of adding,layering, and continuing, always keeping the goal in sight.
It does help to remember that it is a process and not exactly a goal, I've had some periods of time when its been really hard to keep the goal in sight but it seems to become easier as I focus more on the process of getting there rather than what often seems to be unattainable I've also noticed that the more I am involved in that process the more at peace I am with my life as it is now, job and all
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