Reclaim Your Worth as an Artist

by Mihaela Ivan Holtz

Reclaim Your Worth as an Artist

Reclaim Your Worth. Reclaim Your Art.

As an artist, you need a powerful, resilient, yet flexible and fluid sense of self-worth. Self-worth keeps you connected to your creative energy. When you feel in touch with your self-worth, you can make art that you believe in. You trust the value of what you create – its message, meaning, power, and purpose.


A real trust in your creativity begins with accepting yourself and all that you are. Connected to yourself, you’re able to maintain a solid belief in your own value, despite your perceived strengths or weaknesses, beauty or shadows. Grounded in your sense of self-worth, you don’t question what you create, you just do. You don’t get stuck worrying whether your art it will impact your audience, you just trust that it will find its way to those who will appreciate it. You don’t try to measure its value, you just feel its value. And, you don’t compare yourself with what others are creating, you just get to work and make your imprint into the world.

When you are in this mindset it’s not about proving anything. It’s about living and playing in the fantasy realm. It’s about bringing your daydreams to life. It’s about engaging in your craft and your pure self-expression. Fully trusting your creativity, you can give clear voice to unanswered questions, the different complex human experiences, or the unique depth of your characters.

Yes, all of this is possible when you’re in touch with your self-worth. It’s a simple yet powerful way to live, but it can feel so difficult to attain. In truth, it’s not about attaining anything at all…

Self-worth is not about who you are, it’s about what you do with what you are.

Reclaim Your Worth as an Artist


Self-worth is not an entity. It’s not something you possess or can lose. Rather, self-worth is something you can have access to. It’s something that flows forth when you’re in a relationship with all of who you are – your greatness, your messiness, your unfinished parts, your craziness, your brightness, and your darkness.

To embrace your sense of self-worth is to embrace your most authentic self and your most authentic experiences.

Self-worth is not about never feeling insecure or scared. It’s not about avoiding feelings of shame, rejection, or about never feeling unseen or unloved. Self-worth is about trusting that despite all that, you still have value. Therefore, you can express your creative energy, show up, and bring your art in the world.

Regardless of your experiences, self-worth protects you from letting anything stand in your way of being creative. It helps you see that, in spite of anything you might have been through, you are a human being who has inherent value and who has an ability to add value to the world. Supported by your self-worth, you can connect to your full humanity and access real courage, determination, and power to pursue what you want to create.

How Can You Cultivate Your Self-Worth in a Career That Can Tear You Apart?

Read the rest of the article at Stage 32…

How Connecting To Reality Can Further Your Creative Dreams

by Mihaela Ivan Holtz

How Connecting To Reality Can Further Your Creative Dreams

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.

How Can You Help Yourself Stay Grounded in Reality While You Still Honor Your Dreamworld?

Read the rest of the article at Stage 32…

3 Strategies to Help Build Creative Intimacy

by Mihaela Ivan Holtz

Creativity requires you to stay present and connected with all that you are – your talents, skills, and vision, as well as your feelings, thoughts, and inspiration. Your most private experiences and aspects of your internal life all come together and, one creative moment at a time, they become your art.

As an artist, you know what it’s like when you merge with your art. You and your art flow together and become one. It almost feels like magic. You enter into a state of creative bliss and experience a true connection both to your powers of creativity and to all that you are.

Of course, in the midst of these moments of creative bliss, there are moments of the creative mess. You feel like you don’t know what to do or how to do it. Everything feels like an experiment and you keep making mistakes and repeatedly trying something new.

3 Strategies to Help Build Creative Intimacy

When you have the strength and courage to navigate the messy creative moments, you can eventually find your way back to creative bliss. It takes a lot to move through the creative challenges and into creative flow, however.

To get through the challenging moments that are part of any artistic career, you need to know how to stay present and connected throughout the whole process of making art or preparing for a performance. You need to be present in the face of all the wonderful creative experiences and you need to stay connected even in moments of frustration and confusion.

This process of staying connected to your art in both the good times and the bad times – and everything in between – is called developing creative intimacy.

Creative intimacy is vital as it allows you to make powerful art that is authentic and uniquely you.

As important as creativity intimacy is, it’s not easy to maintain such a state. It requires you to stay present and connected throughout your creative process – including your own limitations, your fears and doubts, and your relationship to the unknown.

So How Can You Help Yourself Build and Preserve Your Creative Intimacy, Despite All the Challenges?

As paradoxical as it sounds, you need to become more comfortable with what challenges you.

Read the rest of the article at Stage 32…