Fear is an obsessive monster.

• Fear warps the mind with a sense of weakness.
• Fear sustains a feeling of powerlessness and enforces self-protection.
• Fear devours more and more of your mind, disconnecting you from perspective, compassion and higher thoughts.
• Fear keeps you in an incessant loop of righteousness to protect you from illusionary evils.
• Fear does not allow you to see reality objectively.
• Fear can lead to an inability to develop other areas of your life.

You are not your fears.

You take on fears from others; your family, friends, relationships, community, the media, leaders, teachers and anyone you encounter. It is your choice to believe in the fears of others.

Every doubt, limitation, judgment and negative action is the result of fear. We are bombarded by messages of fear every day. The media and marketing campaigns are based on creating fears and reinforcing them wherever you roam, keeping you in a perpetual state of threat and disenchantment.

Artists cannot allow fear to override the soul. We need to serve our creative mind, not a fearful one. Serve your desire to inspire, to create change, to motivate, reflect, tell the truth. Shaping your art to please or manipulate others is not serving your art. Adapting to notions of what you art should be or who it will please is preconceived judgment. Judgment is fear.

Blindly following advice or putting limitations on your work is not art, it’s re-creating what someone else has already done. This keeps your expression in the crippling endless loop of fear. It’s detrimental to your art because you give up your power. If you do what everybody tells you to do, or measure your success by comparing it to others, you will never create anything new. Then we’ll be stuck with the lowest common denominator art – whatever appeals to the most people, for the lowest price, at the lowest cost (mentally and economically) to the artist.

Fear is tested at the threshold of change. When challenged with opportunity, or genuine expression which doesn’t conform, fear will step in and fight for its survival. Fear will fight like a wildcat, disregarding reason and the bigger picture for the sake of self-preservation. You’ll be afraid to change, afraid to break the choke-hold of fear because “something bad might happen!” What would be so awful? Your hit counter stalls? Your follower count dwindles? Your stuff won’t sell? If those things concern you, observe the fear in your choices. China has already mastered recreating popular styles that sell to the masses. Disney has bought out half of Broadway and mastered producing shows that sell. The music industry gives us more of whatever the teenagers buy. We’re in a cultural paralysis of “hits.” Doing more of the same in your personal creative ventures is fear, not art. If you are so afraid, why not go into sales and market something predictable?

It is sad when people give their art a chance, then produce the same work that everyone else is selling, in the same way. That’s not really giving your creative spirit a chance at all, is it? Give us something new, something genuine. Our audiences/customers will maintain their own fear of trying anything new if all they see is the same thing. They are also influenced by fear in a huge way. We can help people wake up from their cultural coma, but we have to be authentic.

Release the fear from your creativity. Thank it for its lessons and escort it out of your studio. The future of art depends on the choices we make as artists right now. We are at the border of change. Fear is the status quo for those without vision. Let your art light the path to genuine expression.

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Spontaneous gratitude giveaway!

Leave a comment on this post about how you face your creative fears, and I’ll draw a name to win a signed copy of my novel The Creator State at 9pmCT on Wednesday, August 18.