PRACTICE: When Does it Become Important?
Ep.46 guest Brienne M Brown has always had two loves: art and science. She wanted to be a doctor and always had art as part of her life in tandem.
It wasn’t until grad school where she found herself so focused on science that she wasn’t making room for art.
And she discovered something incredibly powerful: Art is IMPORTANT to her living a good and happy life.
Even though she loved science, her life wasn’t as good without an art practice.
This is something that many of us take years to learn.
We think of art as an add on. An important add on perhaps but an add on. It’s a thing that we get to do if there is time after all the other more important things get done.
But Brown understood that art wasn’t an add on. It was a must have. It was as integral to her life’s well being as many of the other important things in her life. And knowing that allowed her (and those around her) to treat it as such even before she was selling paintings or a well-known teacher.
Art was important BECAUSE it made her happy. And that was enough reason.
Put it to Practice:
Your art is important because it’s important to you. It is worth your time, your energy and your money.
This is true absolutely no matter your skill level. You don’t have to wait until you reach some level of “good enough” or have piled a book shelf of awards or a ledger filled with works sold.
How much time and money you can spend will vary for each of us based on our circumstance. But you absolutely don’t have to wait until you meet some external metric before it gets to count as important.
If it’s important to you now, that’s enough. And once you give yourself permission for it to be important, you might also start giving yourself permission for it to hold space in your life.