Caring Enough Not To Care

Want to be an artist? Great. But if you don’t have a fall-back, something you can earn money with under stress? A couple of things will happen. One is that you will always feel insecure, not good for artists. The artistic part of you is child-like, and children are happiest and most creative when they feel safe.

Another is that that lack of safety will warp your artistic impulse. Frankly speaking, as you gain success, you will start becoming more attractive. Once more attractive, people will come to you with offers. You must be able to sort between them, decide which are the most important. Better still, you have lifetime, three-year, one-year, quarterly, monthly and weekly goals, yes? So out of the offers that come your way, which one provides the best building block toward your lifetime goals? Because the trick is to have all those goals lined up, and to the best of your ability, ONLY do things that are in alignment with. Your ultimate dreams and goals.

Bruce Lee’s first student, Jesse Glover, got a concept from Lee he called the “One Big Punch.” The thing which EVERYTHING ELSE you do is just setting your opponent up for. If you get the opportunity to land it, the fight is over. You have total CONFIDENCE in it, because it is strong, and fast, and you know where to put it.

When you have that with girls (“If I can just read her one of my poems”) or jobs (“if I can just get onto the sales floor and talk to a customer”) or finances (“If I can just get to the point where I’m saving 10%…”) or whatever, that single…