Follow-through

break the cycle of bailure now

Following through on our commitments is one of the biggest challenges we face. It’s inevitable that at some point in your making, your project will try to thwart you. Or you will thwart yourself. 

All too often, we pick things up but don’t finish them. I call this ‘bailure’. We bail, then feel like a failure.

This array of unfinished things drags us down. They clutter our space and contribute to the artist’s malaise—that we just can’t finish anything, that we don't have what it takes to make the art we want. 

Let’s consider that it’s a normal part of the creative life that your interest will wane. No, it’s not because you are so timid or ill-equipped to stay with a project to completion. It’s hard! Some of the things that will sway you: 

• You will grow bored. 

• Another project will try to seduce you away from your first commitment. 

• You’ll bump up against the limits of your skills. 

I have a theory about why it’s so hard to stay with it. Check it out:

All of this will ball into a tsunami of ook that will tell you to give up and abandon the project. And chances are, in the past you have given up on your commitments. So you have developed a pattern of leaving things before they are finished. 

Your inner critic LOVES this about you. Let’s shake this pattern off!

INVITATION

Revisit your fears map to see what still feels accurate.

Do you recognize this funnel pattern in your own making process? No shame. Acknowledge it.