I’m currently reading “Linchpin” by Seth Godin and learning all about fear, our resistance and how real artists ship. I’m quite intimately familiar with what he explains in the book. Being an artist myself and also living with one, I know all about the fears, procrastinating, reasons to not do something. He illuminates that lizard brain, or resistance, we all have in hopes that the acknowledgement will be a step in taming it and making it easier to work with. He describes it as “The resistance is the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise.” I recently had some major lizard brain and resistance going on. Here is a quick story about it.
Last Saturday morning an art handler was coming to my studio to pick up the 16 paintings I had done for a summer show at 1stdibs in New York City. This will be my first real show in the Big Apple – one that I was invited to participate in. An artists dream, right? By Friday afternoon, I had a total melt down. I felt extreme fear, anxiety, confusion – my emotions were all over the place. The odd thing is, over the last several years, I’ve led teams to implement rather complex business systems and was labelled “the fearless leader” Wow, if my co-workers could see me now. Lying on the couch, clutching a pillow, tears streaming down my face. Totally afraid.
The fear had been building all week. I kept having the urge to physically hold onto something. A pillow, my partner, a blanket, I was actually clingy – yuck! I felt so exposed, and I hadn’t even sent the work yet.
The resistance and my lizard brain had been working overtime – some of the things it was saying:
- What if the art handler doesn’t show up-there’s no way I can be in the show then.
- What if my work gets damaged, destroyed on it’s way to New York?
- What if when the work arrives, they actually hate it – the organizer had only seen my work online, not in person.
- What if the organizer of the show isn’t who she says she is, has no relationship with 1stdibs at all, and is going to steal my work? (oh yeah, I thought it)
- What if nothing sells – how embarrassing – I spent a lot of time promoting this and telling everyone I know. Maybe I shouldn’t have told anyone about it.
- What if everything sells, and all my dreams come true, what would I do then? I only know how to chase my dreams, I don’t know how to actually live them.
But I shipped anyways.