Preparing to Live With Success

We prepare for everything else

Photo by Lauren Kan on Unsplash

What if this image—a writer, alone, with a bench of her own—is one of “success”? Does it strike you as such?

We set a goal to complete a piece of writing. Done.

Send it out. Done.

See it published. Done.

Hope for a decent review. Done….

For each goal met, we set a new one. Or three.

Success is a funny thing. We want it, or think we do. Then it happens. Or happens in increments. And how do we deal with it?

Why is it that too often, when we have success in hand, we dismiss it? Or diminish it in some way? Remember when the act of completing a work was the goal? The only one we had?

Did we stop to celebrate having met that goal? —before we bundled off to create another one? How did “having goals” replace “writing”?

Maybe we need to prepare for success as much as we prepare for rejection and for writing/creating itself.

And maybe that looks like something we weren’t expecting.

Otto Rank, whom Freud called “his heir,” (Rank wrote Art and Artist, and Freud disowned him when Rank questioned some of his work) said that “success is the greatest enemy of the artist.”

If we succeed and have not prepared our soul for success by teaching it to honor solitude, then we may be in trouble… When success is not balanced with solitude, fame can snatch away one’s soul… much of fame is projection.”

[Success] “can dictate to the soul and kill the soul.”

(Matthew Fox)

In his book, Creativity: Where Divine and Human Meet, Matthew Fox speaks to the roles of silence and solitude, and the connections between being a creator/creative and an outlier in the world. He says that “meditation nurtures the soul with good food, with the food of silence and aloneness.”

Reading this work pushes at me to mull over the sense of emptiness that can overcome us after we’ve created. The “post-partum” is how I’ve always thought of it. But that emptiness (as opposed to “aloneness”) can happen to an even greater degree when the outside world recognizes our work, and pushes its way in.

It’s an odd truth of the creative process—that we really do need the silence and solitude, and to know the healthiness of that. I mull over the pieces that keep me intact (for the most part… most of the time!) and Fox’s words resonate.

Some kind of contemplative practice—meditation or prayer, time in the natural world—builds this capacity in us, and with it, the capacity to live with “success” as well as rejection and loss.

I find it fascinating that the hunger that comes with the two extremes of what we do are both met by the same food.

~~~

Looking at elements of the contemplative piece of an artist’s life:

— Letting go

Part of creating is to let go of the days when it’s not coming easily.

When I surpass my word count for the day—let’s say I write 700 words instead of my 500—I don’t re-calibrate the next day’s goal to 300; it’s still 500.

Likewise, if I don’t meet the 500 goal, but write 250, the following day’s goal is not 750; it’s still 500. Time has taught me that this is how it needs to be. I let go, and move on.

I suspect that letting go of the daily work in this way is a type of practice for letting go of other elements of our writing life, including “letting go” of success. This pragmatic-daily translates to the deeper work of setting aside what doesn’t serve us, and moving on.

When we’re writing, if we’re immersed in the process, we aren’t thinking about the distractions of rejection/failure and success. Rather, we are experiencing joy.

“The artist, at the moment of creating, does not experience gratification or satisfaction… Rather, it is joy, joy defined as the emotion that goes with heightened consciousness, the mood that accompanies the experience of actualizing one’s own potentialities.”

Rollo May

Of course, if you’re really immersed in your process and you are feeling this “joy” then you are simultaneously unaware of anything else. Really, to think of that makes me smile—that’s as it should be!

The “trick” is to mull over it after the time has passed. Contemplate that time, and the nature of it; imprint the feeling of it, the joy in the work. The joy in you.

Take time with this so that you might move from an unconscious sense of deep pleasure in the work to a conscious awareness of letting go.

— Cultivate being still. Rest in silence.

Again, being conscious about this as you go—

We have times when the work is not coming easily; this can be when my mind is most caught up with the “business” of “being a writer.” That is, the lack of word while waiting on an editor to return thoughts on a project, or waiting for news from my agent, waiting for a review to emerge for a new published work.

Note how the word here is “waiting.”

Waiting is not silence! It might be crickets, but it’s not silence. It’s not “being still.”

Again, I come to the phrase of letting go. To make room for stillness.

“Stillness gives way to centeredness” (Fox).

And a passage from Creativity:

“…a person not at home with aloneness and solitude soon becomes swamped in loneliness. A cosmic loneliness takes over the soul when the soul can no longer feel the intimacy of communion with the many beloveds who bless us daily—from stars twinkling to grasses growing, from animals staring to flowers beaming. It takes a sense of inner silence to begin to appreciate the love and revelation and caring that are all around us in the other-than-human world. Loneliness feeds on a lack of aloneness, a dulled sensibility to solitude.”

Fox, Creativity 137

Loneliness drives us away from the joy in creating, and from the pleasure that comes with sharing our work with the world in the best and healthy ways.

Because there is that—that is success.

— Celebrate!

The goals thing? Can we break them down to one at a time? Or even make “one” enough? And take the time to slow and celebrate the one? An incremental goal-met!

How to celebrate. By sharing with another writer. Do you have a writer in your life who will do this with you, and understand? (Maybe The Unschool should have a “CELEBRATE” thread. Why not? For now, please share in the comments—I’d love to hear!)

Or a silent celebration. “Celebration” doesn’t have to be fireworks and noise-makers.

Take a moment to feel and express gratitude, to pause and deeply consider the effort that went into your work, and to honour that. To feel gratitude for your ability to do, and to push beyond what might be a barrier of some form; you know what it takes for you to do this work. Acknowledge that.

Take a moment—or a day—to spend in some way. An hour in the garden or a favourite walk. A particular meal you enjoy creating and eating. A time with your dog. A time reading, either an old favourite book, or one that’s been waiting for you.

Take time to understand what—exactly—is a “celebration” for you. We are all so different that it’s mind-boggling for me to think or presume what this might be.