From Fear to Fearless: Decision Making in your Art Career

Ever wondered why making decisions seems so overwhelming, especially when it comes to your art career? We're here to help you uncomplicate the process and use decision making as a tool to propel your career forward. We’ll unravel the seven-step process to effective decision making, and reveal why you should be aware of the traps of over-researching and comparing - the catalysts to decision fatigue. Get ready to harness the power of your prefrontal cortex and make decisions that truly honor your artistic journey.

Being decisive is much more than just making quick choices; it’s about moving fearlessly towards your goals. This episode is designed to embolden you to action, regardless of fear or discomfort. We’ll discuss why decisiveness isn’t just a trait, but a currency for achieving what you want in life, particularly in your art career. Added bonus: we’ll share a valuable tool to help you plan your art launches online effectively. Tune in for transformative insights that can turn your scattered dreams into focused, tangible success.

Join the waitlist for Artful Decision Making 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Mind Over Medium, a podcast for artists who want to make money doing what they love.

Speaker 1: 0:06

When you tune in each week, you will learn how to attract your ideal commissions, approach galleries for representation, have a great online launch of your work, and how to do it all with less overwhelm and confusion. You will have the opportunity to hear from amazing artists who will share how they have built their successful creative businesses. My hope is to create a space where artists and the creative curious can gather to learn about one of the most important tools creative entrepreneurs need in their toolbox their mindset. Thanks so much for tuning in to Mind Over Medium podcast. Let's get started. Hi everyone, before we get into today's episode, I wanted to let you know that the waitlist is now open for my 12-week course Artful Decision Making how to transform your artistic journey from scattered dreams to focused success. If you feel like you are stuck on the hamster wheel and would love not only some support but practical tools to create a business that makes you feel overjoyed more than overwhelmed, you should get on the list, and I will offer special pricing for people on the waitlist, so you should definitely sign up. The link will be in my show notes and on my website. So head on over to leanslotkincom to sign up.

Speaker 1: 1:28

On today's episode, we're going to be talking about decisions, and I found this quote that I felt was very fitting for the episode, so I'm going to share it with you you cannot make progress without making decisions, by Jim Rohn Pretty straightforward and quite true Decisions. We're going to talk about decisions today and how to make them, why we delay making them and how being decisive can help your art career. I would say one of the common themes I see with my coaching clients is they feel overwhelmed and confused about what to focus on and how to spend their time. What do I mean by this? I'll give an example. When you are a creative business owner, there is no denying you have a lot of decisions to make about your business, because we not only create the work or product that we're selling, which involves many decisions, but we also need to figure out our marketing plan, our sales goals, our sales strategies, administrative duties, just to name a few, and that can lead to decision fatigue. I believe the fatigue comes from not making the decision, but by spending time worrying about making the wrong decision. We're going to talk about making decisions because some of you are spending way too much time in confusion because you don't make decisions.

Speaker 1: 2:48

But first let's talk about how decisions are made. I did some very scientific googling and found that there are actually seven steps to making decisions or to decision making and this comes from very smart sounding folks from UMass, dartmouth. So it has to be true. Here are the seven steps that they identified in decision making Step one identify the decision. Step two gather information. Step three identify alternatives. Step four weigh the evidence. Step five choose among the alternatives. Step six take action. And step seven review your decision and its consequences. Easy peasy, right, yes and no.

Speaker 1: 3:35

Here is where I see many of my clients trip themselves up. It's not in step one. They're usually crystal clear on this one and for most they've decided they want to figure out how to make money as an artist or make more money as an artist. Great decision identified. Where I see people get hung up is on steps two and step three. So step two gather information Sounds innocent enough.

Speaker 1: 4:02

Here's the thing. Gathering information or doing research is a good thing until it isn't. If you go back to listen to my episode about having too much inspiration, it might be helpful, because I talk about this in more detail. Gathering information or research is work, yes, but it can also keep us stuck in a cycle of indecision. This can look like researching and I'm using air quotes around that word how other people in your field are marketing their work, which can turn into a rabbit hole of procrastination and compare and despair, and neither of those things are going to be helpful with making decisions to get us into action.

Speaker 1: 4:45

Step three identify alternatives. Again, makes sense and sounds pretty easy. Again, yes and no. This is where I see a lot of my clients get overwhelmed. They've decided they want to make more money as an artist, so they want to identify alternatives to getting their art in front of more people. Should they promote on Instagram and if so, do they have to make reels? Do they have to show their face? Do they have to talk to the camera? Should they just do a regular post or carousel post? Do they need to take an Instagram marketing class before they even get started? Is Instagram even enough? Should they be on TikTok or Facebook? You get the idea. And when you're just getting started or trying to grow your business, these are legitimate decisions you need to make. How can we make this easier and less painful for you.

Speaker 1: 5:36

Let's break it down. I've talked about making decisions ahead of time and how important it is to access your prefrontal cortex. That is the highest part of your brain we can use to honor a decision that you've made. So I've talked about that before decisions ahead of time. Let's talk about it in a way that may seem silly, but I think this will help illustrate the point. Let's say you've decided to take a vacation. Okay, you've identified the decision, great.

Speaker 1: 6:04

Next, you probably gather information such as do I want to go somewhere warm or cold? Do I want to be active or relax? How much money will I spend, how much time do I need to take off from work and when will I go. Then you may do some research about where you've narrowed it down to by doing some Google searches. Or maybe you go old school, like my husband, and order a photo or a guide or two, or you may ask a friend's opinion about it. You will then weigh the evidence and choose among the alternatives and take action. Your action is probably booking flights, making sure your car is in good shape like taking your car to the mechanic buying tickets to a museum or park, reserving hotel, etc. You get the idea. What you don't do is decide you want to go on vacation and then jump in your car and drive to the airport and look at all the departing flights and maybe ask the people in the airport where they are going. Then worry you're making the wrong decision because you've gotten a bunch of different answers. Then think maybe I should rent an RV. Then go look at RVs. No, you make a bunch of decisions ahead of time, using your prefrontal cortex to ensure that your vacation is planned properly, and I understand this is a silly comparison, but stay with me.

Speaker 1: 7:26

3. Making decisions ahead of time and honoring them is the way that you overcome that primitive brain that likes that instant gratification. 2. Indulging and Confusion we spend a lot of time in I don't know or I'm so overwhelmed. One of the things that I see holding back most of my clients is this idea I don't know how to do something, or I don't know what I want to do, or thinking there is one right way to go about something. And the problem with staying with these thoughts is it almost always leads to feeling confused and or overwhelmed, with little to no momentum forward. And it feels important, it feels like you need to be confused for a while because it makes us feel like we're taking a decision seriously. But confusion is generally an indulgent emotion. So how do you keep from getting sucked into decision fatigue or feeling overwhelmed?

Speaker 1: 8:24

There are several ways and techniques you can use to help yourself. I'm going to go through them in no particular order. Okay, one choose one thing to focus on for a specific period of time. Here's an example. Let's say you decide you're going to add 50 people to your email list in 30 days. Why is this important? Because deciding takes us out of confusion. It gives our brain direction, which it loves.

Speaker 1: 8:50

I always recommend my clients pick a time frame for several reasons. One, it helps to create a list of tasks needed to be done to reach the goal. And number two, it's been my experience that us creative folks have a hard time committing to just one thing. We have lots of ideas and want to try them all. Committing to a pretty short timeframe and getting started can help with that feeling of FOMO. Number three, you get to experience some success in a short amount of time, which helps us stay motivated. And number four, you now have some data which is going to be helpful in knowing if you need to make changes in order to meet the goal. Here's another way we can help from getting sucked into decision fatigue or feeling overwhelmed.

Speaker 1: 9:37

Stay with me when I say this no, there is no wrong decision. Here's why Making and taking action on a decision in your creative business may or may not give you the exact results you hope for, but it gives you something equally as valuable confidence. By creating decisions and taking action on them, no matter how big or small, it creates confidence. It's creating confidence because you're keeping your word to yourself, and that is a muscle we can build up and make stronger. The opposite is true as well. If you continually make decisions to take action in your creative business or really in any area of your life, and then either do it once or twice and then quit or blow it off entirely, you're making that muscle stronger too. So choose wisely. I want you to think about it. What makes something a wrong decision is only you deciding that it was a wrong decision. Isn't that crazy? There really are no wrong decisions unless you decide that something was wrong, and I encourage you not to do that. I want to encourage you to honor ourselves for the decisions that we've made and that we can have our own backs for those decisions.

Speaker 1: 10:46

Get in touch with your future self. This is example number three of how we can stay out of decision fatigue and overwhelm. Get in touch with your future self. Imagine you a year, five or ten years from now and you have more experience and have met your goals. How would you be guided on that decision? What does your future self say and why? When I'm making a big decision in my life, I like to ask my future self what should I do and why? My future self always seems to know exactly what to do. I believe this is a good way of tuning into our intuition.

Speaker 1: 11:21

Okay, number four decide you are either winning or learning, not failing, which is true. We are either winning or learning. If it didn't matter if you failed at it, would you do it? If it didn't matter if you failed at trying something or quitting something or taking action towards a goal, would you do it If failure didn't matter? Because, remember, failure is just the way you think about it. If you're only winning or learning, then there really is no failure. Nothing is a failure. So when you take out the thought that you could fail, which one would you do?

Speaker 1: 11:57

Number five another question is who do I want to be? Fear is not a reason to not do something. In fact, most of the things we're doing, we're going to be a little afraid to do. Discomfort is not a good reason not to do it. Discomfort is the currency to getting what you want in your life. So just be really clear and answer the question what moves you toward who you want to be?

Speaker 1: 12:22

Number six ask yourself what is the best and worst case scenario. When I have a client go through this exercise when pondering a decision, they usually are very clear on the best case scenario but are often very unclear on the worst case scenario. Or when pressed to answer, they see that it's nonsensical, like someone on the internet might make a comment. If they post their work or someone from their past will have an opinion about what they're doing. This is really common. We were moving towards a goal or doing something new. We feel the fear but aren't always able to articulate it because it's generally like this low hum of anxiety all tangled up in a fear of failure. So if the best case scenario is achieving your goal and the worst case scenario is hard to describe or so out there, it's probably never going to happen. Why not move forward? So why am I doing a whole podcast on being decisive? Why am I encouraging you to make decisions? I'm going to give you some really good reasons on why you need to make decisions, and make them more often, and be decisive.

Speaker 1: 13:24

Number one making decisions saves so much time. Being in confusion, being in I don't know, waste your time. It's indulgent and a giant time suck. I don't know if I want to apply to a festival. I don't know if I want to reach out to a gallery. I don't know if I want to post my work on social media. All of these, I don't know, keeps us in a place of limbo, and that limbo is what cost us our time, because not making a decision is a decision in itself, right? I just had this conversation with my son.

Speaker 1: 13:55

Making decisions gets you into action. So many of us are not taking enough action towards the things that we want. We are trying things a couple of times and throwing our hands up and saying that didn't work. It's a matter of decide, take action, evaluate, rinse and repeat and, honestly, it can get a little boring, but it is what we have to do if we want to move our business forward and most of us, when we don't make decisions, we just go ahead and make decisions. We just consume more information, watch more Netflix or do a little doom scrolling to make up for the fact that we haven't made a decision. When we make a decision, then we can start taking action towards that decision.

Speaker 1: 14:37

My favorite byproduct of becoming a good decision maker is it increases our confidence. If you think about it, being indecisive feels disempowering, thinking you don't know how, or you're confused, it's draining. As soon as we make a decision and we get out of I don't know, our insecurity goes away. Think about how you feel when you're confused, when you're doubting, when you're hemming and hawing, and then think about how you feel when you're decisive, when you make a decision and you back yourself up on that decision. That's a whole different level of confidence. And when you create the feeling of confidence, you want to make more decisions. And the more decisions you make, the more you increase your growth, the more you increase your action, the more time you save and the more confidence you increase.

Speaker 1: 15:24

Gosh, I think I'm going to tally up the number of times I said the word decision in this episode. That was a lot. I hope you found it helpful and if you have any questions, please reach out on Instagram or on my website. And have a great time deciding to have a great day. Thank you so much for listening to Mind Over Medium Podcast today. If you found the episode inspiring, please share it with a friend or post it on social media and tag me on Instagram at Leigh Ann Slotkin, or head to my website, wwwleighannslotkincom to book a discovery call to find out more about working with me one on one. You can also head to my website to get a great tool I've created for you to use when planning your own online launch of your artwork. It's an exercise I've taken many of my coaching clients through and it's been very helpful. It's my way of saying thank you and keep creating.