Today's Must Read!

If You Want to be a Better Artist, Adopt Astronaut Wisdom by John Weiss

There's a well known phrase: Do what you've always done, get what you've always got. Most people know that achievement usually requires change. Obesity doesn't evaporate with wishful thinking. Addiction won't disappear through hope alone. Better artwork seldom happens by painting the same way over and over. So, if we know that the path to improvement demands change, why do we resist? Fear. Can you hear me, Major Tom? There are many things that can prevent us from achieving our best selves. They include laziness, procrastination, poor time management, self sabotage and immaturity. Perhaps the most powerful impediment, however, is fear. The musician and singer David Bowie passed away this year. Many remember his Ziggy Stardust alter ego. He wore outrageous costumes and performed in concerts, television and movies. He even sang a duet once with Bing Crosby. David Bowie is credited with being a music visionary who influenced many artists after him. Yet despite all of this, off stage he was a shy and introverted person. He even had a fear of flying. An article about David Bowie in BeyondAnxietyAndDepression.comnoted: "When you see David Bowie put on a performance you will think he's outgoing, fun, exciting and generally a flamboyant person. But, when Bowie is off of the stage it's a completely different story. When he's not pretending to be someone else, he has to deal with the shyness of being himself! Like many other celebrities and singers, Bowie uses his music and his stage to be someone else." One of David Bowie's most famous songs is Space Oddity. It tells the story of an astronaut named Major Tom, who loses communication with ground control and becomes lost in space. I wonder how much David Bowie felt lost in space? Clearly, performing was easier for him when he could hide inside the character of his alter ego, Ziggy Stardust. No doubt pretending to be someone else eased his fear. Similarly, there are a lot of people out there wearing masks. Pretending to be someone they're not. Maybe to help manage their fear. But if you pretend long enough, you start to lose track of who you really are. Before you know it, your own mission control (true self) may start calling out to you. And sadly, like the line in the song Space Oddity, "Can you hear me, Major Tom?" there is no reply. Ride that meteor back to earth Chris Hadfield is a retired Canadian astronaut and the first Canadian to walk in space. He has flown two Space Shuttle missions and served as Commander of the International Space Station. As a boy, Hadfield was inspired by the Apollo 11 moon landing on television, and wanted to become an astronaut. So he did. Of course, it wasn't a straight shot to the Space Shuttle. First he went to school, then joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and became a fighter pilot. Eventually, he ended up on the Space Shuttle and International Space Station. Chris Hadfield delivered a stirring TED talk titled What I learned from going blind in space. Apparently on one of his space walks, condensation inside his helmet caused severe eye irritation. Because there is no gravity for tears to drop, they just coalesce and get bigger. Soon both his eyes were irritated and he was unable to see. Fortunately, astronauts train for every imaginable problem, including "incapacitated" astronaut rescues. He was assisted back inside the spacecraft and able to clean out his eyes. Chris Hadfield told his TED talk audience that the original Space Shuttle missions had a 1 in 9 chance of catastrophic failure. He said that lift offs created such force you felt like someone was pouring concrete over your body. He joked that "there is no problem so bad, you can't make it worse." He described reentry into the earth's atmosphere as akin to "riding a meteorite back to earth." Talk about danger. Talk about fear. Why would anyone do it? Part of the answer, according to Hadfield, has to do with spiders. One hundred spider webs For Chris Hadfield, what propelled him to face his fears had a lot to do with his childhood inspiration, as well as deep questions about what the substance of the universe was made of. Never the less, there was still considerable fear to deal with. And the way you get over those primal fears is by reprograming yourself. Hadfield talked about spiders, noting that few are dangerously poisonous. Still, when people walk through a big spider web, they freak out. A primal, largely irrational fear takes over. The solution? Walk through one hundred spider webs. Soon you discover that the soft, nearly invisible webbing is harmless. And that spider in the middle of the web is more afraid of you than you are of him. Facing the things we're afraid of and then doing it, over and over, tends to kick fear in the face. Shoot for the moon Chris Hadfield appears for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in a short, inspirational video titled An Astronaut's Guide to Optimism. The basic message of the video is this: "Our world is not as bad a place as we often feel it to be. It is easy to look to the future and lament how far there is left to go, but sometimes it is helpful to stop and reflect on just how far we've come." Consider the fact that in just over the last 100 years we've gone from filming the Wright brothers to landing a camera on Titan, a moon 800 million miles away. "We live the way we do," Hadfield explains, "because people chose to tackle their problems head on." What does any of this have to do with becoming a better artist? Well, a lot of creative people never put up a website or show their work. Because of fear. They think they'll be rejected. Others are frozen by shyness or introversion, like David Bowie. A lot of us wear masks, and become lost, just like Major Tom. If an artist wants to grow, he or she has to start walking through some spider webs. Maybe that first web is approaching a gallery about your work. The next web could be posting your artwork on a website, for the whole world to see. Over time, those spiders and webs aren't so scary. You learn volumes in the process, which helps to improve your art. And you become more optimistic. There's no reason why you can't shoot for the moon. Face your fears, pull off that mask and walk through some spider webs. Reprogram your thinking, expect some setbacks, but keep tackling those problems head on. And learn to be more optimistic. Even if you have a day job, there are tons of ways to infuse creativity and artfulness into your work. Don't believe me? Check out this video of Chris Hadfield, in space, playing his guitar and singing David Bowie's song Space Oddity. If Chris Hadfield can chase his dreams and juggle his passions, you can too. Just adopt a little Astronaut wisdom!