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Three Powerful Shifts to Improve Your Mindset
Mindset is the lens through which we perceive the world, and it directly influences how we tackle challenges, setbacks, and opportunities.
As a visual artist, developing a positive, growth-oriented mindset is essential to realising your full potential and achieving your aspirations.
In this blog post, we’ll delve into Three Powerful Shifts to Improve Your Mindset that can completely reshape your approach to life and art.
We’ll also uncover the science behind these shifts and how you can apply them today for lasting change.
1. Embrace Growth Over Perfection
Perfectionism can pose a significant barrier to creativity. As artists, we often feel compelled to produce flawless work, likewise, we want our communications, our marketing and submissions to be perfect. This fixation on perfection can hinder progress. The key to overcoming this is prioritising growth over perfection.
The concept of a growth mindset, introduced by psychologist Carol Dweck, suggests that abilities and intelligence can be developed with time and effort. By shifting your focus from striving for perfection to valuing progress, you create space to experiment, learn from mistakes, and enhance your skills.
This mindset shift is especially crucial for artists, who flourish in an environment where creative exploration and trial and error are celebrated.
The Science Behind It:
Research has demonstrated that individuals with a growth mindset are more resilient when faced with challenges and setbacks.
Dweck’s studies show that those who believe in their capacity for improvement are more inclined to tackle difficult tasks, persevere, and ultimately achieve greater success.
2. Practise Gratitude Daily
Gratitude has a profound impact on our mental well-being.
By practising gratitude daily, we train our minds to focus on the positive, which can boost our mood, alleviate stress, and enhance our sense of fulfilment.
As artists, it’s easy to dwell on what isn’t working—whether it’s a piece that hasn’t turned out as expected or the pressures of managing a creative business, or the sales that didn’t happen. However, redirecting your focus to what you’re grateful for – even if you can only think of something small – can transform your perspective and inspire greater creativity.
The Science Behind It:
Positive psychology research indicates that gratitude stimulates the brain’s reward centres, enhancing feelings of happiness and well-being. It’s also associated with increased levels of serotonin and dopamine, the neurotransmitters linked to joy. Beginning your day with a gratitude practice can set a constructive tone that influences both your art and everyday life.
3. Visualise Success
Visualisation is a potent and proven technique for achieving success. By vividly imagining yourself accomplishing your goals, you create a mental framework that directs your actions and sustains your motivation. This approach is widely employed by elite athletes, performers, and successful individuals across various fields.
For visual artists, this could involve picturing your work displayed in galleries, sold to collectors, or even crafting the perfect piece you’ve always aspired to create. The clearer your visualisation of success, the more likely you are to take meaningful steps towards making it a reality.
A key here is to anchor in your visualisation with positive feelings. Not only seeing the work in the gallery but feeling the positive feelings of having your work in the gallery. And to do this – finding a past experience where you had positive feelings can help make the feeling real (which is just one reason why gratitude works nicely with visualisation).
The Science Behind It:
Neuroscientific studies reveal that the brain processes visualisation similarly to actual experiences. Whether the experience was real or imagined your brain treats it much the same – what a great thing for us artists!
This mental rehearsal strengthens neural pathways and enhances performance. When you visualise success, your brain becomes more adept at recognising opportunities and taking purposeful action.
Ready to Make These Shifts?
Mindset forms the foundation of all achievements. By adopting these three transformative shifts—growth over perfection, daily gratitude, and visualisation—you’ll be paving the way for a more rewarding and successful artistic journey.
By intentionally reshaping your mindset, you’ll not only grow as an artist but also become a more resilient and confident individual, ready to face whatever life brings your way. Let’s harness the power of mindset together and unlock our full potential.
If you’re ready to delve deeper into fostering a growth-focused mindset, I encourage you to explore my 33 Days of Becoming: A Downloadable Mindset Journal for Visual Artists.
Click the link below to purchase your journal today and start shifting your mindset for success!
