Scribe

Intro

Hey friends, so have you ever been so frustrated with your art that you've actually asked yourself maybe I shouldn't be making this in my career, or maybe I shouldn't even be doing art? I've actually have had those days and I still get them from time to time.

But everything really changed for me when I had this one mindset shift that this video is all about the thing that I talk about in this video, and I'm going to get to that in a minute. But first the thing that I'm drawing in this video it's a it's this giant Fox with like this character got it right here.

It's this character facing off against this giant Fox being with like glowing fiery eyes, and I really think this is like a metaphor for what I talk about in this video and that as artists, we face this. massive, like thing up against us when we sit down to create something. I should mention too, that if you want to Ink this drawing, I have a link to where you can download the line art.

You can print it out and you can ink it yourself. You can follow along while well I ink it or you can you know, do it on your own time or whatever. But I think it'd be fun. Like I was saying this is a metaphor for the things you face every day as like a creative person when you sit down to create, it's sometimes it's like a Monumental effort to make something.

What I talk about today is the three different things that I think that helped me to go from a guy who didn't feel like he was accomplishing much to a person who's being way more productive, and. more importantly, more satisfied with the work I was making. So the three things that I get into is number one making magic talk about dealing with failure and a mindset that's from the sports world.

That I think actually really applies well to artists. And then the third thing I'm talking about is day trading creativity, and I get into what that's all about. Now, if you stick around until the end, I'll be sharing this silly Mantra that I say to myself every morning. That helps me be more productive and satisfied with the things that I made at the end of my workday. So let's get right into it.

Creativity

Last week A friend of mine was writing a screenplay and he was just having a rough day with it and he barely made a dent in it all day long working on it, you know, from morning. to evening and some days, creativity or like working in on anything creative.

It's like that the sun rises and the sun sets, and the only progress you've made on your project was sometimes just thinking about it, and so me and my friend we were just lamenting to each other about how hard it is to just be creative sometimes, and then I said this to him we were texting, so I'll read the text here.

He said I said you know this already, but creating something from nothing is legit magic, and writers have to do it every day. So don't feel bad that it's actually hard some days, and that's a message that you know I extend to anyone who creates not just writers, but you know whether you're an artist, or you're drawing Comics, or you're writing music, or you know you're making films or.

Making video games doing what whatever creative project that you're on, you're Conjuring up something from nothing and it's going to be hard. You, if you think about the greatest event in history that ever happened, was when space time and matter all exploded onto the scene from nothing you know. First there was absolutely nothing. There was. There wasn't a here or there, or an up or a down.

Failure

There wasn't time, there wasn't anything, and then poof a universe. Scientists are still trying to unlock that mystery, and as far as like all of our instruments can detect you know they. I think it only happened once. But in a way it also happens every time you sit down to the drawing board and you conjure up something where there was nothing. So don't feel bad that it's actually hard some days.

Don't feel bad like if you. felt like you were a failure today, and really that's like one of the things I wanted to talk about today is that you shouldn't let failure or let a bad day keep you from creating right.

You shouldn't really focus on that, that off day or that bad day, and you shouldn't really focus on that good day or that like day where you're really on what you should just focus on is showing up and creating something every day. Now the cool thing about failure is that what you fail at and how often you fail should be this diagnostic for how much you're growing.

So when you succeed at something, you're usually blind to what part luck actually played into that. But when you fail, you can see everything that went wrong from whether it's your personal shortcomings or maybe just straight bad luck and the key. is to turn that failure into a learning experience, and let that inform your next attempt.

So I used to think that someday get to this point where every drawing would be perfect and every project would be like this home run, because I'd finally mastered the craft and I could just execute all the time. And what I realized 25 plus years into this art career that I've had is that you don't really get to a point in life where you're just done failing. You just start failing in different ways right.

In fact, I would argue that if you aren't failing, you're not pushing yourself hard enough. I remember hearing an athlete talk about the rule of thirds, and it's not the compositional art rule of thirds, but this is a different rule of thirds, and if I remember it right, she said that if you're working. on something hard, and if you're really like trying to push yourself onethird of the time, you should feel really good, you should.

It should just be a PL, a blast to, like you know, be doing this thing, but then another third of the time, it should be just okay. Like you showed up, you did it. It wasn't good, wasn't bad.

And then that last third of the time you should be failing and feeling like you really have no business doing this thing that you're trying to do, and that's how you really know that you're in the right spot. That's how you know that you're growing.

Day Trading

It's easy. You know. If the thing is easy, you're not growing and you're not pushing yourself. If it's always a failure.

You're pushing yourself way too hard and you still aren't growing. But if you find that sweet spot. where oneir of the time it's wins and you're feeling good and one3 of the time you're just like yeah whatever I did it and what a third of the time you're like man. That was really hard then you know you're. You're doing the thing that you should be doing now.

I think maybe the worst thing you could do, though as an artist is what I call day trade in your creativity, and that's where you pay too close attention to how you're doing daytoday, on your projects or on the creative Pursuit that you're that you're involved in day trading. In normal terms, outside of creativity is when you is when you measure your success financially by how well you did each day in the stock market right.

So so like I had a couple friends who tried out day trading and they would invest in. the morning they would watch those stocks move up and down. They'd try to sell when stocks were high and they'd go buy stocks that they thought were lower. And you know they just be like eyeballs on.

You know those little metrics up and down, up and down, up and down, and at the end of the day they would hope they'd have more money at the end of the day than they did at the beginning of the day. And these studies they've done on day traders that if you don't know, if you don't know what you're doing 95% of the people who day trade stocks, they lose money in the long run.

So, and the problem really is, it's just they're focused on the those day to day flu fluctuations of the market and really they lose sight of the bigger picture and they don't notice. whether they're decisions that they're making on a day to day basis, are trending up or trending down.

Now the smart investors, the ones who make real money in the stock market, are and I should say the ones who do it with the least amount of stress and the least amount of like work.

They're the ones who make consistent deposits into a portfolio of stocks and then they just forget about it and they'll check on it maybe once a quarter, or they'll check on it every six months, or maybe they just check on it annually and if something wasn't performing as well as they like, they'll go and make adjustments. They'll say: oh, you know, I only got a 2% return on that one.

Let's move it over here where this other stock was getting a 10% return right and over the long run, over 10.20 years. You know they've made quite a return on this investment that they're doing, and they weren't stressed out about it, and it was just something that they kind of were deliberately and intentionally doing, you know, at regular intervals, but not thinking about it.

So those kinds of investors, whether they're up or down at any given day, it doesn't concern them at all. It does. You know. They're not checking to see how their stock did yesterday, as opposed today. It's the only thing that matters to them is trajectory, and that's what you really need to think about. As a creative person, as someone who's making something is thinking and worrying about that trajectory.

By only paying attention to whether you're having a bad day or a good day, a productive day or a slacker day, you just might lose sight of the bigger picture. So. instead, what you need to do is be like these long term investors and make consistent, creative deposits and then just forget about it. So whether you made something amazing one day or something forgettable the next day, it's not important.

What really matters is that you showed up every single day and you just did something and you moved the needle a little bit every day. Then, each quarter or every six months or every year, you take stock of your trajectory. Did you finish x amount of projects you know? Did you finish five more projects this year than you did last year, or two more this quarter than you did last quarter?

You know are the drawings that you made that you're making now? Are they do? They look better than the drawings you made last year right?

Sketchbook vs Sketchbook

Look at last year's Sketchbook versus the Sketchbook you're. currently in and try to objectively look at. Are these drawings better? Are they more well constructed? Are they more creative? Right? Or are you Landing the type of jobs that fit the skill set that you have?

You know, are you getting paid a little bit more for what you're doing? So whether they're up or down on any given day shouldn't matter to you, shouldn't concern you. It's again it's that trajectory that matters and really what helps me to pay attention to not really worry about day trading my creativity and not really worry about whether I had a bad day or a good day.

What I do is I you know, silly, but I repeat to myself almost every morning. I repeat this Mantra and again it's like dumb, but it helps me and it's this. Some days you hunt the Raptor. Someday the Raptor hunts. you, but you always dress for the hunt. So think about that. Find a mantra that works for you.

Remind yourself every day you know it's not about whether I'm up or down, not, it's not about whether I got hunted by the Raptor or if I was able to hunt Raptor. But did I show up today? Was I ready? Was I? Was I creating today and just worry about that long trajectory?

Find a Mantra

Okay, so what's your Mantra? What's the thing that you say every morning?

That helps you feel motivated, that helps you like get ready to take on the day. I want to know what that is. Leave that in the comments below and if you don't have one, let me know what you think of my Raptor Mantra. If that's something that you're going to start using in your sort of morning routine, if this video. helped you at all.

If you got any sort of like aha moments from it, then you're going to love my newsletter that I put out twice a month, every other Friday. In it I share like creative things that are inspiring me. I share what I'm I've been working on recently and I also share like I call it the inspirational thought unit.

It's one little like tidbit of information or a tidbit of inspiration that I've been thinking about that week and I try to share it with you, and a lot of these YouTube videos evolve out of these little inspirational thoughts that I put together. That sounds cool to you. Sign up for the newsletter.

That link is below now if you thought this was cool or interesting and you want to see someone who's putting this stuff into practice and how that's affected their career. and the things that they're doing. You're going to want to watch this interview with Emerson tongue that I did.

He's a video game artist, professional video game artist, works on Doom, but he's made a book a about these robot, like drawings that he's been doing on the side. But this book is like so cool the thing that he's doing with that. So watch this video you're going to you're going to love it.