by Mihaela Ivan Holtz
As an artist, you live in a dreamworld. It’s a world filled with creative ideas, passion, and fantasy. In that world you meet characters, you hear music, you envision the stories that you want to create.
You love your dreamworld. It’s where all your creative ideas are born and where your big career dreams come to light. This is where you feel most at home.
Living in the dreamworld comes naturally, but that might mean that reality feels like a strange and challenging territory, for you.
The arts world is a particularly big reality to take on. It’s a world filled with uncertainty, unknowns, and competition. Rejection lurks around every corner. It can take a lot to be seen and valued for your real worth. And then there’s the potential for mistreatment and abuse…
So, you may be inclined to avoid reality – not only because you love your dream world so much, but also because the arts world can be harsh and challenging.
Is Avoiding Reality Actually Helping You Achieve Your Creative Dreams?
What would happen if you dared to see and face reality? What if reckoning with reality could move your artistic career forward? What if there is power in working with the reality?
It’s important to understand that even if you deny reality, reality doesn’t go anywhere. Whatever you wish to avoid is still there to challenge you. In fact, being in denial makes you less able to face your challenges. It can make you more emotionally reactive, overwhelmed, or terrified of the things that you need to face. Denial steals your ability to consciously work within reality. When ignored, reality has a way of taking over and controlling you.
In this emotionally clouded place you can lose your connection to your talents and skills. You’re less likely to put your efforts where they belong. It becomes harder for you to see possibilities and opportunities as they emerge.
There’s a common misconception that your artistic dreamworld needs to be at odds with the practical, mundane, difficult aspects of life. In fact, it is possible to live in your artistic realm while staying grounded in reality.
When you acknowledge and work with reality you become actively engaged in building your career dreams and deepening your creative life.