Being an artist means constantly dealing with fears. Many of these fears are gifts from school, family, friends, and society. Or sometimes they are the fears of others who are directing us. But there's no reason to gripe about that. Knowing what has impacted our thinking gives us the power to dismiss those influences and replace fear-based thinking with empowered thinking. A good way to differentiate these two styles or modes of thinking is with the words "action" and "reaction."
ACTION
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REACTION
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| A new activity that proactively initiates positive change | A response that attempts to reverse or eliminate an unpleasant emotion or seemingly urgent situation | |
| Is about building opportunity for the future | Is about solving problems quickly | |
| It makes a good situation evolve | It makes a bad situation go away, at least emotionally, and temporarily | |
| It feels like more work, but it works more | It feels like less work, but it works less | |
| The motivating emotion feels good | The motivating emotion feels bad | |
| The action is positive, leading to more positive situations and ensuring long-term success | The reaction is either positive or negative; a positive reaction is short-lived, and a negative reaction leads to more unpleasantness | |
| Realization of goals may take more time but it leads to long-term success—it takes longer but it lasts longer. | Resolution may come sooner, but it is only a short-term solution—it comes quicker but it goes quicker. |
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| Emotion is reinforced as the goal advances | Emotion declines as the goal advances | |
| Motivation continues after the goal is met resulting in long-term rewards | Motivation discontinues after the goal is met and is replaced with temporary relief | |
| Motivating emotion drives you to another goal, as the goal is to increase positive emotions to drive us forward | Motivating emotion does not drive you to another goal as the goal is simply to make that emotion go away | |
| Action is characterized by strong, clear, hard thought | Reaction is characterized by murky thinking | |
| It is empowering | It is overpowering |
Check your polarity. Think of negative and positive in the broadest sense. Positive comes from the word "posit," which means to put something or to place something. We still use the word posit to describe taking a theoretical stance. Think of being active as positing or positioning your stance. Negative comes from the word "negate" which originally meant to deny, or to say no. If you are reacting, think of it as saying "No!" Think of it as denying yourself opportunity in exchange for short-term problem solving and short-term relief.
Check your motives. What's motivating you? Are you trying to solve a problem quickly? Reactive choices are always a way of short-term problem solving. Is there a way to move this into a long-term solution? Are you compounding the problem with assumptions or behaviors that makes it an emergency when, with a little honesty, it could be less of an emergency? And what long-term actions can you take that will make this urgent problem disappear in the future? Examine your motives and see if you can replace them with more positive ones.
Check your emotions. What emotions are driving you? You can respond to negative emotions by changing your thinking and becoming positive. Everyone gets sad or angry. Just because you feel sad or angry doesn't mean you are about to deal with it in a negative way. Can you replace the negative emotion with its positive counterpart? Or can you find a way to deal with it, either actively, or reactively if you must, that can move you forward? Identifying your motivating emotions is a good place to start.
Motivating emotions: |
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| Confidence |
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Fear |
| Faith |
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Desperation |
| Gratitude |
v
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Anger |
| Generosity |
v
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Neediness |
| Joy |
v
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Sadness |
| Patience |
v
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Panic |
| Pride |
v
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Shame |
| Responsibility |
v
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Guilt |
| Self-esteem |
v
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Embarrassment |
| Friendliness |
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Loneliness |
| Goodwill |
v
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Envy |
| Assertiveness |
v
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Doubt |
| Eagerness |
v
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Disappointment |
| Excitement |
v
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Anxiety |
| Calm |
v
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Stress |
| Composure |
v
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Agitation |
| Forgiveness |
v
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Resentment |
Check your thinking. When you act with "action," you are using forethought. You are being proactive. You can jump on opportunities, and put in the extra work that makes you successful, without reacting in impatience or panic. Being aggressive does not mean being reckless. Being energetic does not mean acting as if opportunity is an emergency. Being thorough is not being obsessive, and being alert and gutsy is not being compulsive. Most of all, taking action means having faith and confidence, while reacting means working out of fear or complacency. What are your attitudes? The following are some examples of opposing attitudes.
| Act or react with positive or negative attitudes: | ||
| Energy |
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Indifference |
| Curiosity |
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Ambivalence |
| Creativity |
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Indulgence |
| Passion |
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Aversion/Avoidance |
| Confidence |
v
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Defensiveness |
Check your options. Have you considered options or pushed them out of your mind, making it easier for you to be reactive? What are your options? Is there a long-term opportunity you can focus active energy on instead of using reactive energy to present a short-term solution to a problem? Are there skills you can add to your toolbox that would help you go in a different direction? Review your options.
Check your reality with others. If your thinking is "reactive," what makes sense in your own mind quickly falls to pieces when talking with (relatively healthy) others. Are you hiding your decisions from others? Are you making decisions based on erroneous thinking about other people's situations, motives, or desires? Have you simply asked? Have you put yourself in a situation where you feel you have to hide? What narratives are you trying to comply with or live out that you can change, even if they are the prevailing stories of the art world?
Check your feelings. Do you feel in control of your emotions, or do your emotions feel in control of you? Reacting to emotions and finding short-term solutions to problems will make you feel out of control and fighting demons. Strangely, such behavior is compelling and addictive. This is partly because you set yourself up to more and more problems that demand immediate resolution, and partly because the resolution of those problems leads to instant and visceral gratification. If you put out a fire, you are happy it is out. You are relieved. And that feels better. But how do you really feel?
Check your timeline. Where are you in time? Are you fixating on the past? Are you hanging on to things that didn't pan out? Are you going the opposite extreme and are you burning bridges? Are you building on the past and recognizing that present opportunities always come out of past work? Are you confident about the future or worried about it? Are you acting in the present to build future opportunities or reacting in the present because the immediate future feels dire? What's your timeline?
Check your direction. Are you moving forward, upward, and outward, or are you falling back and collapsing within? Are your wheels or feet hitting fresh new roads, or are you spinning your wheels and pacing in circles? What is your trajectory?
A good way to clarify what is happening when you react is to separate the circumstance you are reacting to from the emotion or action you are reacting with. What is the sequence of events, emotions, and actions? Are you reacting to one emotion with another emotion? For example, you might react to your fears by acting out with anger. Reaction has a way of compounding, just as action has a way of compounding.
The first step to dealing with a problematic situation is to choose either a positive or a negative emotion. A positive emotion will lead very quickly into a positive action.
Sometimes, however, we do have to say "No!" Sometimes, we do have to have a negative emotion like anger. Sometimes we do have to shut something down. It is up to us to guide this sequence of events away from a trajectory of negativity and into a direction of positive actions. At some point, you must substitute a positive for a negative, very intentionally. People who live under duress have a hard time doing this. People who live in a safer, saner place find it easier to make the transition to action following unavoidable reaction.
When you take an active interest in your well being, you are engaging in activity that proactively initiates positive change. You are taking new steps to building opportunity for the future instead of wallowing in old emotions and getting mired rehashing the past. When you react to negative situations and emotions, you are moving backward instead of forward. Is your mind and tool kit expanding or are you shutting the lid and saying no?
In summary, action makes a positive situation evolve. Think of the phrase, action feels like more work, but it works more. Being active works more often, and it works with more effectiveness. On the other side, think of the phrase, reaction feels like less work, but it works less. Reaction works less often and it works less effectively. Over time, action becomes easier and easier, while reaction makes life harder and harder. The more emergencies you have, the more overactive your fight or flight response becomes. And the more duress you endure, the more black and white your thinking gets.
Action is characterized by strong, clear, hard thought. It is empowering. It takes longer and it lasts longer. Reaction is characterized by murky thinking. It is overpowering. It comes quicker and it goes quicker. In short, action is long-term opportunity building and reaction is short-term problem solving.
Of course, action can be problem solving, as well—but it's long-term. When you take action, you are anticipating future problems. These may be things that have never happened, but you imagine they could. Or they may be things that happened and you don't want them to happen again. Or maybe you are just looking at ways to make things more productive, easier, or safer. These are all long-term solutions. When you spend the time that it takes to invest in solutions like these, the anticipated problems may never happen to begin with. You may never know what disasters you prevented. Or a problem that happened at one time may never happen again, and the solution may expand to take care of problems you had not anticipated. Being motivated by concerns, or even fears, can be healthy in these cases. Being able to imagine negative scenarios is okay if it leads to positive solutions.
Negating a negative situation is essentially two negatives, and that's not always going to be a positive. There are, however, times when short-term problem solving is desired. You may need to react with black and white thinking in a situation of immediate duress. You may have time to evaluate the consequences and you may not. You may have to accept that there are negative consequences to an action you were wise to take. Looking back, you may find that you did things that made the situation evolve, or maybe you had absolutely no choice in the matter. The main question is, is your life one of constant "two steps forward, one step back?" Or, do you accept setbacks from time to time but keep moving forward?
We don't have control over everything, or even a lot of things. Dig up quotes from famous artists and you find that they were often poor and beat-up the whole time they were shaping art history. But these artists would never have had such an impact on culture without thinking positively. They posited their stance, and they positioned their art. They acted in the direction their muse took them. They were courageous, not fearful. And they were in it for the long haul. Sometimes a really long haul—not for the contemporary, but for the historical.
