Ever since I had my brain explode into a million creative visions, I’ve been on the journey towards living an authentic, creative life as an artist. I’ve been determined to make this happen. Being creative is part of my blood, but it wasn’t encouraged as part of my upbringing and was seldom supported by my peers. If it is your dream to become a professional, well paid artist — do not let those who speak from their own fears infect your mind. Hold onto your faith in your vision.
Often we creatives are encouraged to “get a real job” or to “grow up” and stop doodling away our life — but we can’t. We are possessed to create or else our unicorn chi engulfs into an inner void of despair making life feel not worth living. Creation is our nature, and the only thing in our way is our damn dream killer dragon, ferociously trying to burn down any growth we’ve managed to make with words that pierce as sharp as her fangs. She is vicious and encompasses every single negative comment we’ve ever perceived and absorbed that gets in our way. Today, we are focusing on one very important component of these negative beliefs… money.
Money always seems to be at the bud of our excuses as to why we aren’t where we want to be. And why don’t we have money? Well… because we’re trying to make our creative careers happen of course! And yet, we are holding back because we are afraid the money won’t come.
What if I told you that you actually have an abundance of money waiting for you on the other side of a few subtle mindset shifts, and in divine timing?
Money was the biggest and bestest excuse I could find to procrastinate on going for my dreams, which ironically, would be the thing that brings the money I was waiting for. Do you see the double edged sword here? We think we need money to go for our dreams, but it’s in going for our dreams that we create the money.
So let me ask you — what money do you really need to get started? Is there a free alternative that you could utilize to get started until THAT brings in some cash? I know you are creative, so I don’t have any doubt in your ability to be resourceful.
ACTION STEP 1 — Come up with a list of 10 ways you can get started selling your art WITHOUT SPENDING ONE MORE SINGLE PENNY.
Let me tell you a little about my story with money. Okay, so I fell in love with art, had all these visions coming to me, thought I went all in and — BOOM! Fell flat broke on my ass BECAUSE I was scared. I spent all this money on coaches telling me things I already knew, looking for more advice and external validation instead of being brave enough to put myself out there on that next level! If I could do it again, I would just put my head down and hold onto my faith, be kinder to myself and make lists of everything I was doing well and JUST KEEP SWIMMING.
But instead — I caved to that oh so convincing voice inside of me that tells me I’m not good enough and that I need MORE equipment, MORE voice training, MORE money, MORE coaching, MORE, MORE, MORE.
Believe me when I say, you do not need any more of any of it. All you need is to trust that your beautiful, unicorn self is so very needed and loved. Let your voice, story, art, and any form of expression SHINE and NEVER ONCE stop to listen to ANYONE’S doubts — not your super hot boyfriend, or your seemingly successful friends, or even your idol. NO ONE knows the vision and the power you hold inside except YOU.
So back to my sob story…I survived with next to NOTHING in the bank for over a year. I’m talking scrounging through all my pockets to find any spare change that could MAYBE accumulate to affording me a meal. It got bad. I’d literally be homeless if I didn’t have a very supportive family and partner. I wouldn’t recommend taking quite these risks, but I also don’t regret it at all because I got in this much trouble from investing in myself. And not surprisingly, going completely broke came with a ton of amazing lessons. But I’ll admit it — there’s likely a much better way.
When I went really broke — First, I panicked and tried finding any work I could find, but something about my energy was expelling any opportunities. What I learned is that — it was me. I was the one expelling these opportunities because, well, I didn’t really want them! I knew deep down inside I wanted to be an independent artist and pave my own path. I was DONE working for others. But with each failed attempt at getting some sort of job, I fell deeper into my self esteem issues. I listened to everyone’s advice, except my own inner truth, and ultimately paid the price for abandoning myself like that.
Eventually, I picked myself up off that self loathing puddle of unicorn tears and started to do the work. I stopped drinking because it was seriously damaging my life force energy and making me have to start over again and again and again. I started to bring yoga and meditation back into my life. I started eating way more of a plant based diet to align with my care for the planet and my health. I started reading/listening to books and podcasts all about building wealth and a healthy money mindset and turned the best tips and tricks into this post.
When you hit rock bottom in any part of your life, you have basically lost all hope that it will get better. You’ve expelled all you were taught to do and NONE of it worked. This is a scary place to be, but it is also the place where a new way can begin. I invite you to enter this new phase with me now.
Here it is my unicorn homies— my top 3 trickniques at overcoming the biggest and baddest excuse holding you back from going all in on your art. They are surprisingly simple, but do not underestimate their effectiveness:
- Go through your belongings and get rid of everything that is no longer serving you, is no longer bringing you joy (especially if it never did), or no longer is needed. If something brings you joy, keep it. If something is useful AND brings you joy — definitely keep it. If something is no longer useful and doesn’t bring you joy, let that baby go find a new home. It’s all about being on the frequency of love — NOT ATTACHMENT. This technique works for habits, relationships, emails, old photos, paperwork, THOUGHTS — anything. You might need to visualize cutting emotional cords with whatever it is by closing your eyes and literally picturing yourself cutting an energetic chord that looks similar to the wormhole in Donnie Darko, and sending love and white healing light towards it as you release it from your emotional body. My only advice would be to let it all go WITH LOVE (and not some dramatic text message like I used to do). If you have some pent up emotions about whatever it is — write a song about it! Or draw a character! Or paint with all the wild colours of your feelings! This is how we artist turn our trash into treasure — RELEASE & MAKE ART OUT OF IT.
- Come up with a list of 10 ways you can get started sharing/selling your art WITHOUT SPENDING ONE MORE SINGLE PENNY. I mentioned this one before, but to keep this post nice and organized, here it is again. This journaling prompt helped me realize that, maybe the part of my brain that thinks I need more money to even get started is wrong. You can get started with free services like this blogging site, or by selling your art and designs on spoonflower. You can write a book and sell it on amazon for free. You can start a Patreon and get subscribers from inviting people from social media or other platforms you like to use. You could offer a workshop through your social media and create a Facebook group for all those who sign up, or post the workshop on EventBrite and invite people through your social media. There are tons of examples of ways that we can all get started with $0.
- Now I know that a lot of the time, the barriers are emotional or involve having low self esteem. I know for me, my self esteem has been broken many times by things like a broken heart, or a lost job. These events in life are hard to recover from, but I know that for me, once I start to listen inward and learn the lessons from the experience, I get closer and closer to my authentic self. This step is all about looking inward and getting really clear on the emotional wounds that feel like they are in the way. Get your journal out and write it about everything that hurt you in the past that has you weighed down, not living in your light and feeling hopeless. Write about everything that caused you to have negative beliefs about yourself, about life, about money. Write about the limitations you think there are on your life. Write about the reasons why you think you can’t have what you desire. Write about your fears around money. Dump out all the negativity and do not for one second judge yourself. Write about any shame you feel around money and life. Write letters to anyone you hold resentments for (and ideally don’t send them — at least not until you’ve sat on it for a little while). Let yourself cry or scream and release as much as possible. Breathe out through your mouth. Shake your body. Stretch. Get it all out.
- Journal about what you are grateful for that money already bought you & think about the joy or growth this brought you. Write about how much joy it brought you, or where it took you on your journey. Write about some positive memories with that thing or in that experience. If you got into debt, be grateful for the banks for having extended it to you so you could have those experiences and things. This doesn’t mean we want to continue the patterns of debt, but it’s a great way to release the attachment we have to wanting to change the past. When we see the good, the lessons and the purpose of the past, we are able to let it go with love.
- Journal about what you still desire for your life that money can buy or help make come true and bathe in the excitement of the idea that you COULD have it. Get really personal here. You want to make sure you’re DREAMING about what it is that light YOU up, not the rest of the world, or what we are marketed and brainwashed to want. Do you just love buying cute little anime figurines? Do you love travelling to new, tropical places? Do you just want to be able to afford a week of laying in bed and rewatching F.R.I.E.N.D.S episodes? Do you just want to be able to afford a nice little bath bomb once in a while? Or maybe you dream of being able to buy a new pair of shoes? I think sometimes we tend to envision what we think we should want, like a massive mansion and the coolest new car — which is totally awesome and fine too, but the goal here is the get really authentic with what would bring YOU joy, and sometimes that desire is very simple and not that hard to attain. Focus on how it would feel to EASILY be able to afford those (simple) joys in life.
- Take back your power and give. Life can sometimes smack the wind right out of us. Sometimes, the hardest thing is when our life was heading in the right direction, then we get blindsided by loss or by something not going the way we thought it would. Sometimes we lose everything all at once. Sometimes it feels like every inch of our energy gets drained from the inside out. Sometimes we need to retreat from the world to take back what is ours. Never forget that you are an energetic being, capable of creating your own force in the world. Connect to the earth and the cosmos and visualize all the love in the universe encircling your whole entire body. To take back your power you don’t need to take it back from those who burned you along your path. You can reconnect right now and choose to be the vessel that brings the spirit realm of infinite love and light to this earth. Bring in more light. Give love and kindness generously, especially to those who cannot return it as they are hurting. Be grateful that those who tore you down once are now stronger because of your presence in their life. You are strong enough to handle and heal from what the past brought you. Maintain your boundaries. Protect your power, but do so by seeing the light in others, and life will bring you great wealth. What you give, you receive. How can you give right now, right where you are? What are the gifts you can offer, even with no money in the bank? How have you been holding back from sharing your wisdom and gifts with the world? Go do something nice for someone else. No matter how poor we feel we are, we always have something to give. When we give, we align with abundance and allow that frequency to rebuild in our life.
I wish you all the abundance and love and joy and freedom in the world. Keep creating. Keep letting your magic shine. Keep trusting in your path. And if right now things feel dark — know this too shall pass. The Deepest Seas will strengthen you and are leading you to the shore. You are needed. You are valuable. You are powerful. You are wonderful.
You are love(d).
— akèso
