023 Capitalism & Creativity
Running a business is a delicate skill to be built. And that skill is figuring out how to strike the balance between:
1. the structure and constraint of time, energy, and resources
2. the rested, pleasured, cared-for mindset that has the space to create something worthy and valuable
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Other episodes you'll enjoy:
011 Value-Driven Business Pt 2
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Business owners have to be creative. Business ownership is naturally a creative process. When you're a business owner, you're looking out into the world and you don't see something that needs to exist. So you create it yourself. You have something inside of you that needs to be expressed. And so you share it, your business likely won't be successful or sustainable if you're sitting around waiting for someone to discover your work. So you have to go put it in other people's faces and in that way you are the creator of your revenue. Business owners create something from quote UN quote nothing something that didn't exist. Before that, we came up with using our brainpower, our bodies, our experience, our cultures, our time and our energy. Your business is unique because your brain is unique and we are all creative. It's just a matter of whether you are practiced at tapping into it. Here's the crapitalism. Side of things and yeah, you heard me correctly. I said capitalism, not capitalism, but because it's crap. Sometimes being a business owner is also the way you support your life, whether that's paying for housing, food, health care and pleasure. You need time to produce products or services. To create revenue in your business and that provides you with an income, but we already know that perfectionism is capitalism and white supremacy's demand. And here's what it's demanding. Capitalism and white supremacy demand perfection from us, and especially if we're the ones running the show, that demand can seem suffocating. If we're not producing enough and it isn't perfect, we're programmed to think that nobody will want it, right? One thing we know about perfectionism. Is that we can choose not to focus on it. We have an antidote to perfectionism, and that's the following, focusing on excellence. How are you showing up and being the most excellent version of yourself in your business? Whatever you have to bring to the table at that moment is excellent. If you're being transparent and you're showing up and giving whatever you have in that moment, it's creating a culture of learning and recognizing that mistakes are going to be made. And that doesn't mean that anything has gone wrong. That doesn't mean that everybody is imperfect. Mistakes happen, and we have to be OK with making mistakes. Because mistakes are really an opportunity to learn, mistakes can sometimes result in good things. So whether you consider yourself creative or not, if you're a business owner, then I think it's true that you are creative. You gotta let go of perfectionism in order to be successful and productive. This means letting some of your work be ****. Letting other people be upset with you, letting other people choose not to hire you. This goes back to the notion of consent, which means that other people have the key information needed to make the choice that's right for them. By not allowing people to say no to you, you've taken away their consent in that conversation. Letting go of that, letting go of that capitalist white supremacist demand on us means that you recognize that your creations are inherently worthy and. They do have. Value in the marketplace, but before we continue a brief message.
Here's what I know to be necessary for creativity. You also need time away from the demands of production to be creative and to allow space for creativity to flow. Rest is vitally important to creativity. Not having the time to rest can lead to your excellence being stifled. So when you're tired, burnt out and hustling your way to a goal that is shutting off that creative faucet, hustling is what you do when you see. Heat your survival being dependent on how hard you work or how much you produce burning out is what happens when you see any time away from work as time wasted, whether that time away is for rest or pleasure, or just to do **** in your life that has nothing to do with your business. Lack of rest can result. In your major systems in your body shutting down and going into disaster mode, you increase cortisol because you're anxious all the time. You can't think straight because you're tired and probably sleep. Your digestion gets out of whack and we all know how that affects every other area of our life. That's why rest and pleasure are even more important than working to house feed and care for yourself. The ****** part of all this? Is that our economy is based on you having to work to make money and survive. So rest. And pleasure are a necessity, both for the creativity it takes to run a business and the care that you take for yourself because you're an animal, an immortal. Body with a human brain and that brain is not much more evolved than our primitive ancestors. Your body is made to both need rest and it is made to experience pleasure. And both of those things support you running your business. Your business is a creative expression and it also provides you. With an income, running a business is a delicate skill to be built. And that skill is figuring out how to strike the balance between #1 the structure and constraint of time, energy, and resources, and #2 the rested, pleasured cared for mindset that has the space to create something worthy and valuable. That is why. Glove working with all business owners, but especially folks who are, quote UN quote creatives. I know I said earlier that every business owner is creative and I truly believe that. But right now I'm talking to you out there who are specifically artists, musicians, performers, writers, dancers, and otherwise creating and expressing yourself. Not only is your body of work as an active resistance to the crapitalism that we live under, your art has been commodified, and you've probably been told countless times that your work isn't good enough, that you didn't spend that much time. For it to be priced the way it is, and that it's just not worth the. Ice that you're asking for it, and yet you create. You show up countless times to let inspiration flow. You know that even the work that is, quote, UN quote **** and won't sell is still work that is worth producing. And if that's not a big **** you to this capitalist economy that demands you turn your inherent creativity into a job. I don't know what it is. I'm proud of you. And I see you. And I believe that what you do is invaluable. We will always need you to create thoughtful, provoking. Beautiful work that is both a commentary on our world and a distraction from it. So thank you for everyone listening. I hope this episode was helpful in some way. Thank you so much for listening and I'll talk to you next week.