As you take risks, embrace change, and achieve your goals, reflect regularly on your journey.
Some times it’s hard to be aware of your progress and track valuable milestones. Creating goals often and assessing the goals may not be enough. It is easy to lose track of your overall progress and forget how far you’ve come in your art journey.
We all start somewhere with our creative life and we can get caught up in creating that we forget that we’re making progress. I started with art and writing as a passionate hobby. It would rub me the wrong way when someone called it a hobby, but that is what it was. My desire was for my creativity to be more. However, at the start of my journey it was only something I did in my free time.
My Journey
I then took actions and plan more time around my writing and painting. The act of planning my time around my creative was the first actual step in my artistic career. It was not my last step, though. I shifted my life more and more so I could make it a business and my career. I’m still working on making it a successful business, but I have been meeting wonderful milestones.
One way I track my milestones is to write achievements in a notebook. This way when I’m unaware of my progress, I can look back at all the wonderful stuff I’ve done. Some milestones are things I can control, like publishing “To Love.” Other milestones are outside my control, like making $100 from “To Love”. It is a wonderful practice to track both what your actions and the actions of your audience.
In the recent past, I’ve also used time tracking apps to see how I’ve increased in my time spent on different projects and on my art business.
My personal journal also has notes on my artist journey. When I journal, I do reflect on how my art has changed and looking at how I feel my goals and dreams are going.
I do also have an art business notebook where I take notes on ideas, research, and plan out my business and career. I can go back and examine how my business has morphed and changed over time, which is helpful in keeping me moving forward.
All this regular reflection has kept me motivated and recharges my inspiration. I have evidence written down that I’m already making progress, so I want to keep going.
Want More?
This is part of Tiff’s Tips a blog series. I have also done a goal setting video series on YouTube.
