Finding The Origin Of Your Mindset

In my last blog post about mindset, I touched on how your upbringing can affect how you think about certain things such as money and your career. We all come from incredibly diverse families and backgrounds, values, and belief systems - and these family styles will impact your life in a multitude of ways.  

Believe it or not, the way you hear your parents or guardian talk to themselves or each other about certain things impacts the way you think about them as an adult. Some of these things might be money, finance, and various activities you might have wanted to do as a child. Some of these messages might be “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” or “We can’t afford that,” or when it came time to follow your passion for art, “all artists are starving.” 

These messages are dense. And throughout my career I’ve come across multiple artists who had mindsets that were hurting them more than helping them, many of them having them same types of stories. This pushed me to question why so many creatives are struggling with their mindset and in their careers. 

I started interviewing some of these artists and was shocked to discover that a lot of their childhood upbringings matched exactly how they were currently living. They did not stray away from their family habits at all. We dug deeper into this, and as the artists realized where their mindset was coming from, they felt motivated to turn it around and take the actions needed to feel more secure and happy in their career. They reprogrammed their mindset.  

As you navigate your art career, you might need to reprogram your mindset in many areas. (Don’t be discouraged, as the ultimate reward is freedom from these mindsets that are holding you back.) I like to look at areas where I am not doing as well as I would like to, and listen to the messages and voices going on in my head. In addition, you can pay close attention to how you handle your money, how you feel when you succeed or hit a bump - do these situations cause you to spiral and stress? Then it might be time for a mindset change.

If you really want to learn the tools and techniques I used to completely transform my mindset, I encourage you to join me in my Art MBA program where I do a deep dive into mindset and how to set yourself up for success, and let go of your limiting beliefs!