9/29/23 One Way Ticket to Easy Street
I just ran across a clip of Denzel Washington on Instagram saying, “Ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship.”
Wow!
It's human nature to avoid pain, so it’s only natural that we all seek the fastest, least painful route to our goal. That’s human nature—it’s a survival instinct.
So, naturally, we tend to get fixated on that goal. We feel that our survival is at stake and we need to succeed.
We learn to set short and long-term goals, to visualize our goals, and to stay focused on our goals so we don’t wander off course. The pursuit of our goal is the engine that drives us down the path towards success.
But, at the same time, we want to avoid pain and we all fear the pain of failure. We avoid the pain of failing at something or of never having any success.
But here’s the problem:
That same pain avoidance can easily make us give up on our struggle towards our real goal—to give up on our vision, of ourselves—and settle. We settle for an easier path with less resistance. Human nature.
We can easily settle into a lifestyle that pays the rent, that’s more comfortable, that guarantees our (and possibly our family’s) survival. It’s a lot more comfortable than committing to the very real sacrifices of time needed to pursue our art, and of the energy for the struggle against the odds that we are up against as creatives—even if that creativity is just a hobby.
But this pain avoidance reflex that pushes us towards a more comfortable life actually inflicts its own wounds that may be ultimately more costly than the more difficult path of the artist.
Those deeper wounds look like this:
• We feel inadequate because we have not yet achieved our goals.
• We beat ourselves up when we compare ourselves to others who are closer to our goals.
• We become bitter and criticize those who have achieved more than we have.
• We feel that we are not talented enough—that we lack the better skills that others must have—so it’s not worth trying.
But the truth is that:
• We may only lack some of the luck that others have had.
• We may actually be achieving other things along our journey that are worth more than our original goals—our unique life experiences.
• Our path is uniquely our own, so comparisons to others don’t even make sense.
• We should cherish the gift of a long and interesting path to walk, success or not.
Focusing on your artistic goal can also mean that you can relax and just keep walking your path, difficult though it may be, knowing only that your destination is actually just a direction you’re headed in, not an actual landing place.
Because your life doesn’t finally begin when you get to your goal.
Your life has always been your own incredible, unique path towards a goal. And that’s the real destination that no one can ever take away from you.
Groove on!
--Tracy