How to Decide on the “Right” Goal

Well, hello, hello. I am Antrese Wood. I am the host of the Savvy Painter Podcast, and I started this podcast because I wanted to create something that would give you, my fellow artists, practical tactical tips to help you create a meaningful art practice that is both fulfilling and supports you. If you have been listening to the Savvy Painter for a while, thank you so much. If you are new here, welcome. I am so glad you found the podcast.

I was talking to an artist who had been going through her sketchbooks from last year, and we were just talking about how proud she was of some of the images and noticing how there was this thread that ran through some of them that showed up in later works. It was a really beautiful look back through some of the work that she had done.

But we also noticed something different. She found these little notes and little words and little things that she had written down throughout the past year. Every few pages, there were ideas that she'd had and projects that she'd wanted to start and names of people that she had run into or met or talked to that could help her with some of those ideas who wanted to help but she never got any further with it and she was disappointed that she had spent the year spinning her wheels even though there was some things in the year that she was really proud of, there were some pieces that she created that she did really like. But overall, she had this sense that she had just spent the year very busy, but not fulfilling.

So I wanted to talk about that. I wanted to talk about setting goals for yourself and your artwork and how we can look at goals, how we can choose goals, and some of the reasons this might be helpful for you. I know at the beginning of the year, we talk about it, there's a million resolutions and all that stuff, and I don't know if I'm really into the resolutions in that sense, but I do love setting goals.

Because as many artists that I've worked with, at least have noticed, and I've noticed for myself, is that when you don't have a goal, you end up just bouncing around from project to project, and it's like whatever is in front of you is what seems to be the most important.

There's a lot of bouncing around in a way that isn't creative, it's just not helpful. When this happens, a lot of artists find it's just like another month or maybe a year and they're not really sure what just happened. They're not really sure where the time went. They're not really feeling like they completed everything.

There's no sense of progress because they were just flitting around and bouncing around and doing a little this and a little of that and it felt in the moment like things were getting done but nothing was being completed and there was no sense of achievement, no sense of fulfillment or progress. The thing is that this happens regardless of whether artists are full-time artists or part-time artists or anything in between, it's not based on the amount of time they have.

In fact, what I notice is that the more time that people have dedicated to the art without a goal, the further they end up getting away from that, from what they actually want because they are wasting even more time. Ouch, that hurts. I just felt bad saying that, that you're wasting time. But in a lot of senses, we are and we do when we are flitting or floating around.

One thing that I think is important to mention here, because I know it trips up a lot of artists, is that this flitting and floating around, like some people will say things like, "Oh, well this is just my process. This is just how I work, and I like to be really creative, and I like to experiment, etc., etc.,” my take on that is that's fantastic if that is your objective, if that is your intention, if you are in a place in your production cycle, let's say, where you are experimenting.

We have these phases that we go through as an artist and we cycle through them and they are different times for different people, different lengths of time for different people. But we have this phase that we go through where we are experimenting and we are developing new ideas and playing with materials and playing with all the what-ifs in our work.

That is the moment when you should be open and creative and the whole objective is just to play. But that's sort of what you're doing in that moment and you're not doing that forever. There comes a time when you decide that you want to work on a series, for example.

You might find a thread in what you were just doing and get really curious either about a particular motif or a method of doing something or I don't know if you're a plein air painter, maybe you just decide, “Okay, I'm just going to do a series on trees because I'm so fascinated with trees and I want to get really good at painting trees.” So you do a number of paintings on that or it could be that you are just obsessed with all the different ways, textures, and colors that you can create.

Or if you're an abstract artist, you might go in all these different directions in terms of either constraints, sizes, or emotions that you're trying to evoke or methods of painting. There are so many choices that you can make in terms of, “I want to follow that thread and create a series on that idea.”

Then you go into the phases of sharing what you just created and selling the work. To me, that is a specific place where you are in your work. For some of you, that might be the goal. But if that's not your goal, and what you're trying to do is get somewhere specific with your work, either a skill set or career-wise with a series or getting into a show or submitting your work to a certain number of shows, you've got to make a decision about that. You've got to decide, “This is what I am going to do.”

That is what gives you the sense of progress. That is what gives you something to hang your hat on is when you've decided that this is the objective and I have now achieved that objective or not. That's what gives us a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction with the work that we create or with the business side of our work.

Or we get that sense of fulfillment and a sense of achievement when we're like, "Yeah, I want to get to the top of that mountain,” for example, versus “I'm just going to wander aimlessly in the woods.” This podcast is going to help you with all of that. I know that was a very long introduction, but hey, you know what I mean.

This episode is going to help you through that, give you some clarity on some of the ways that you can make those decisions, some of the things that I think about when I'm making decisions, and some of the things that I coach people on in Growth Studio and in my private one-to-ones.

If any of this sounds at all familiar to you, just know that you are not alone. It is typically something that artists deal with constantly and actually human beings deal with when we're not paying attention. When we're not paying attention, we're not paying attention to what matters so creating a goal is going to help you purposely and intentionally decide on what it is that you want to do.

Typically, when I start talking about goals, a lot of artists will sort of dig their heels in with that idea that I just talked about but also it's a little bit scary setting a goal. The reason why it is scary for a lot of people is because they have a ton of ideas so it is difficult to decide on the "right" goal, the right one to pick.

They might have a lot of ideas, a lot of things that they want to do. In which case, a goal, a short-term goal, can be narrowing down those ideas and deciding which of those ideas you want to pursue. The good news is you have a lot of ideas and the good news is they're all good ideas and so honestly, there's no way for you to go wrong with picking one of the ideas.

What's difficult about that is picking an idea and then sticking to it, picking an idea and not getting FOMO around the other ideas that you had. To me, in this case, the issue of FOMO with when you have a lot of ideas and you've made a decision like, "I'm going to work on this one thing," and that one thing could be, "I'm going to make this one thing," that's another piece of that, “I'm going to make this one thing my primary goal. This is going to be my North Star. This is going to take priority over other things.”

But that doesn't mean that you don't do anything else. It doesn't mean that you suddenly just put blinders on and only do that one thing. It's not like you're going to just suddenly eat broccoli every day for the rest of your life. You're just deciding that you're going to incorporate broccoli into every single day for X amount of time until you have reached the goal, your broccoli goal. I don't know why I'm talking about broccoli, but you know what I mean.

It's just that some people, when they set a goal, they're afraid that that's the only thing they're going to do. They're afraid, “Oh, well, if I decide to work on this particular motif, then that's the only thing I'm going to do for the rest of my life.” That's not true. It's the thing that you're going to do until you achieve the objective that you want to achieve.

That is your decision what that is and how long that takes you. But we get into this phase, and I'm pointing this out specifically because our brains often like to play these little games on us when we set goals and our brains throw up these roadblocks of ideas and beliefs that we'll just get in our way of doing it because oftentimes the goal that we're setting by its nature is going to take us out of our comfort zone.

Our brain loves to be the trickster and try to throw things at you that will get in your way and keep you safely in your comfort zone and keep you in your cave where there's no danger and nothing could ever happen because our brain often doesn't like change and by nature, what we do when we are setting a goal is we are creating change.

Sometimes we're just afraid to make the decision about what it is that we're going to work on because we think that we're going to miss out on the other ideas that we had. I think that often what that actually means is we're just not trusting ourselves to A, complete the goal that we picked, and then B, go back to the ideas that we had.

We have this false sense that if I choose A, then I will never, ever, ever do B, C, D, or F. All we're saying when we pick a goal is “I'm doing A for now and then when I'm done with that, I will reevaluate do I still want to do B, C, D, or E all the way down through the rest of the alphabet. Do I still want to do that? Which of these is most relevant? Which of these is most exciting? Which of these is the most efficient maybe one to do right now?”

Our brain throws that up at us this idea that if I pick this, then I can't do anything else. That's false. It also throws up this idea that if I pick this idea, then I won't do these other things. A big part of setting a goal and making this decision is that trust in yourself that you can hold on to all of these other ideas that you had and allow them to sit and percolate and wait while you do this one thing. Our brain likes to tell us that, "Oh, if you choose this one thing, you will miss the opportunity to do these other ones, and that is false."

Another reason that we get hung up on deciding our goals or picking the "right" goal, I'm going to put quotes around anytime I say right because there isn't a right goal, it's just the one that you choose, but part of that is what I just mentioned, this fear of not following through.

It's related to what I just said, but it is a little bit different because not wanting to make a decision, in this case, is more about not wanting to disappoint myself, to not follow through on the goal and then be disappointed and have that emotion of feeling disappointed so then we just don't choose anything.

Then another one that I think is so interesting and I've seen this so often is people don't decide on a goal because they're afraid of the success of that goal. They're afraid of having all this succeed and then not knowing what to do next. I find this one so interesting because oftentimes, it's unrecognized.

I was having a conversation with an artist in Growth Studio a while back about a show that she had and she was not wanting to make some decisions about it and we dug into it. What we realized is she was worried that she would sell all these paintings and then she wouldn't know what to do next. She wouldn't have these paintings ready and then people would be wanting to buy something and there would be nothing to buy.

When I pointed that out to her, we just started laughing because she simultaneously was afraid that nobody would come to the show and nobody would buy the art and also that she would sell all the art and then people would be disappointed. It's so fascinating and that's the thing about making and deciding on goals is that all this comes up. It's such a gift when all of this comes up because then you can recognize what it actually is. I help people do this all the time, like it's just this big fear.

When we unpack it and we realize what the actual fear is, oftentimes we just laugh at it because it is silly, these ideas that our brain throws at us when it is afraid and doesn't want us to do the thing that we want to do. The truth is there's always a solution for it.

Once we identified that that was a problem, then that was the thing that she was worried about, then it was really easy to just decide like, "Okay, we're going to pick these particular paintings for the show, and then here's your backup.” If you do sell out, that's such a great problem to have. Also, you'll probably notice that you're selling out. It's not like you're going to be caught off guard.

If you are, what a great problem to have anyway. It's just really funny what our brain comes up with. But so often that is the truth of the matter that our brain is just afraid that things are going to go well and that we won't know how to deal with it when it does go well. Once you name that, once you've labeled that, then you're able to deal with it.

You can anticipate some of the issues that might come up, but you don't have to anticipate every single possibility. When you don't name it, what happens is your brain just starts to spin out on trying to solve every possible thing that could happen, which is giving your brain this impossible thing to do. Then you don't do anything. It's just scary. Half the time you don't even know why.

Naming it and labeling it as, “Oh, okay, I see. I'm starting to spin out on what happens if I am successful. I have this fear of success. What are one or two things that I can think about that might be helpful? Then I will just let that go because I don't want to put myself in a solution where I'm trying to solve every possible problem and also I don't want to be solving problems that haven't happened yet.”

It's important when you're setting your goals to be on yourself and know the tricks that your brain is going to want to play on you because it's going to want to play a lot of tricks on you. Every time you want to do something that is important to you, any time you want to do something that takes you out of your comfort zone, know that your brain is always going to try to pull you back in.

It is in its best interest. This is what our brain does. Part of its job is to conserve energy. That's what it's trying to do. Our brain is always trying to conserve energy, maximize pleasure, and avoid pain, you can always count on that with your brain.

When you set a goal, you are putting yourself sort of in harm's way. You are setting up a scenario where there is a possibility that you will not fail. Also, when you set a goal, you are putting yourself into a scenario where you are going to use a lot of mental energy to get this done because you need to think about things, you need to plan, you need to execute that plan.

You are also triggering the brain's desire to maximize pleasure and avoid pain in that you are deciding to delay gratification in order to get something that you want. That triggers both for the brain because it's like, “Hey, I want instant gratification, and also not having this gratification is painful.” Also, the idea that we might not get what we want, that's painful.”

There are so many things about this that your brain just intuitively doesn't exactly like. It makes sense that it wants to avoid this. That's the more primitive part of your brain. Then there's the advanced part of your brain, your prefrontal cortex that thinks ahead, that's creative, that has all of these other attributes that are not getting triggered right now that can imagine what it will be like when you achieve that goal.

But there's still this little conflict that's going on in your brain. That is one of the things that you have to be on to yourself about and really understand, “Oh, this isn't because I'm lazy or stupid or I'm an artist and I can't make goals,” or all the things that we often say to ourselves. “This is because this is the way my brain works. I have to be on to myself and decide that the pleasure of achieving this goal outweighs the pain that I think I'm going to have while I do this.”

That pain really is deciding that you are going to postpone your instant gratification. You're going to have to say no to things. You're going to have to recommit to that decision and that goal over and over and over again over the course of achieving it.

There's some discipline involved in that and there's some discomfort, especially if you're not used to doing it. But I'm telling you that when you do it, it's just an amazing opportunity for you to grow and the benefits of it are amazing because you just repeat it, repeat it, repeat it.

The first thing that you need to do is decide what is the goal. What do I want to do most? If I have a million ideas, which one of these do I want to do first? Which one of these will I leave for later? To help you make that decision, a lot of times there are a couple of things that I will do.

One of them is to look through the options and decide what would make everything else easier or irrelevant. That's my favorite question. If I had just been in an experimental mode and I want to work on a series, I might decide, “Yeah, I want to work on this series. It's going to be a beautiful thing. I don't have to decide what to paint anymore. I will have my motif decided ahead of time. Now I can play inside of that motif.”

I play around with “That makes it easier for me because I get to continue X, Y, and Z. I don't have to make these decisions every day about what I'm going to paint, I'm going to just explore this one thing.” Or if it's building your website, for example, “Committing to building my website is going to be easier for me because I won't be scrambling for images anymore. I'm not going to be feeling embarrassed when somebody asks to see my work and I'm not going to be embarrassed by not being able to tell people how they can easily buy my work.”

That makes it easier and it makes a lot of other things irrelevant if I decide I want to build my website, or deciding how I want to sell your art this next year, AKA not forever just for this year, that eliminates all the spins and the rumination on what to do and that spin out can be infinite.

I've seen that spin-out be infinite. I've seen people spin out on, “Oh, should it be gallery? Should it be group shows? Should it be an art fair? Should I sell my work online?” You can just decide that for the next year, you're going to go after this one particular method of selling your work or building that up, and then you're going to move on to another one.

You can also decide on whether the shows that I want to enter in the next six months or the next year so that you can be ready and also ignore everything else that comes up so that you're then able to focus on your work.

Again, if I decide ahead of time that for the next six months or the next year, I'm only going to enter these three or four or six shows, then any other show that comes I'm just going to ignore it, and being able to ignore that makes my life easier because then I can just focus on my work. It makes a lot of other things irrelevant because I don't have to pay attention to them because I already know these are the shows I'm going to work on.

Now you are going to have to manage your mind around all these things and you're going to have to manage your mind about everything that we just talked about but making that decision and deciding that as a goal makes a ton of things so much simpler and easier because you can focus.

That's a filter that helps me decide on my goals. I run them through this filter of, “If I set this as my goal, what will be easier or irrelevant?” It is one of my favorite filtering questions.

Another thing I love to do is just envision what will my life be like when I have achieved that goal so I might envision several of these goals and just look at “What will change for me. How will I be different? How will I be different in my studio? What will happen in my studio? What will happen to me? What will happen to my art when I have completed that series, when I have finished my website?”

Whatever it is, I'm not saying you're doing all of these. I'm saying you're going to focus on one of these for a specific point in time. I like to really envision that and really imagine what it would be like if I had achieved that. Sometimes that helps me decide on which goal because I know instinctively my subconscious is just like, “Yes, that one.” It's very clear to me that that's the goal that I want.

I also learned how to do this with self-hypnosis, which is an incredible way to make decisions because your subconscious mind just knows so much more than your conscious mind does. Allowing that into your decision-making is so, so powerful.

Your intuition, your inner voice knows. I like to ask that of myself to tap into that as a resource because it is just so amazing and so powerful. Once you've made your decision, your next step is to trust that the decision you made is the right decision. The decision that you just made is the perfect and best decision for you.

A lot of times we get caught up on what is the right decision, that there is a black-and-white answer, and that somewhere there is written that there was a right decision that you should have and could have made. This is the place where trusting yourself is crucial because there is no right decision. There's only the decision that you make right.

This is so important because people make decisions and then they spend the entire whole year resisting that decision because they're thinking about whether or not it was the right one and having all the FOMO and, “I could have done this,” or, “I should have done this,” or, “This is getting hard. Maybe that other one would have been easier,” and they just torture themselves with that.

Trusting that the decision that you made is the right decision for you and that you're going to make it the right decision by recommitting to it, by deciding over and over again, “This is what I am working on,” it's so powerful. In fact, this whole bit of the conversation that I'm having right now trusting your decision is so big that I think I'm just going to dedicate an entire podcast episode to it because I have so much to say on that piece.

But just know that that is an issue that you have to trust yourself. You decide on your goal and you decide that it is the right goal and then you pursue it with all of your heart and your mind and your creative intellect and you don't allow the chitter-chatter of those voices that tell you that you can't or you won't or you shouldn't or you don't deserve to or you should have picked a different one.

That is a goal worth having, my friend, and a goal worth bringing to life because all of our results, everything that you have is because of the actions that you take, and the actions that you take or you don't take are a direct result of how you think and feel about them.

When you set a goal and you do all of that, you pursue it with all of your heart and your mind and everything in you and you bring that goal to life, the goal itself will be amazing because you made it happen. You brought something into this world that wasn't here before.

You created something magical and beautiful that most people won't see. Or maybe they can't see until you show them. Then they are touched by your magic and the spell is cast and where they hadn't seen beauty before, now they see it. That spreads and that is so wonderful and beautiful.

It's not just about what you create, then of course, there’s your own personal achievement and that is such an incredible thing too. You can open your sketchbook and flip back over the last three months or six months or year, whatever timeframe that you send and look at those ideas that you jotted down and see the fruits of your labor.

Those seeds that you planted have grown and you are a different person for having set that goal and then achieved that goal because it's more than just making that thing. It's more than just making that painting, creating that series, or doing that thing. It's what you did and who you became while you did it.

You imagined a possibility, whether that possibility was a painting, a website, or a new relationship with a gallery, it wasn't there before you imagined it, and then you created it. You said no to the things that would get in your way. You said yes to the possibilities, and you took action to find your way there. You believed in your capacity to do it. You were disciplined when you needed to be, and you had grace, and or gave yourself when you needed to. You made decisions, you followed through, and you showed yourself what you are capable of.

The goal itself, compared to all of that, is just gravy. All right, my friend, that is what I have for you this week. Keep painting, keep being amazing. I will see you back here next week. Talk soon.

If you want to take what you are learning here on the Savvy Painter Podcast even further, join us in Growth Studio. Growth Studio is a unique community of artists. We meet multiple times a week for live coaching, critiques, and demos. Just go to savvypainter.com/join.