i'm currently working on a very special personal video that i can't wait to share with all of you but while working on that i got to reminisce on some lessons and concepts i learned throughout the years and one lesson in particular stood out to me a lesson i had to learn the hard way but one that has been so essential to my whole career that i'd like to share it with you today so sit back grab yourself a warm beverage or something to draw or paint along and join me in the studio for a chill
painting session and an important lesson i've learned by the way not only will the finished painting from this video be available from my website once this video is released but there will also be an exclusive extended version of this video over at patreon that shows you every single bra stroke for all the people who like to see the complete process from start to finish now let me preface everything i'm about to say by pointing out that this is by far not the only important lesson or realization i had throughout my artistic journey but that being
said it is undoubtedly among the most important ones and it's this you will fail and if you don't you're doing something wrong the problem with failure is that most people associate it with losing which puts people into a negative mindset but failure is not defeat it's not a dead end it just means that you have to find a different way or an alternative approach think about this imagine you want to make yourself some tasty and fluffy pancakes you are on a quest to find the one pancake recipe to rule them all you look up a
recipe you buy all the ingredients you cook and prepare everything according to the instructions and then you sit down and give it a taste only to find yourself biting into dense and bland discs of dough a complete disappointment operation pancake was a failure now did you fail do you feel like a failure now well it wasn't your recipe so of course if anything it's the recipe that failed and not you but surprisingly in most other aspects of our life we don't see things the same way you write a book you start a business you paint
a picture you make a youtube video and when things don't go the way you planned or wished for you don't feel like the recipe or the formula failed you feel like you failed and this is especially true for artists or creative people unsurprisingly artists and creative people identify themselves intimately with their creative work to the point where their identity and their work become inseparable that's not good because then when something doesn't work or goes according to plan we tend to take things personally and not only do we then perceive failure as personal failure but it
makes you feel miserable and like giving up but think about the pancake analogy again when a recipe fails or doesn't work you might be angry or annoyed i mean who wouldn't be you sit down expecting to dig into soft and fluffy pancakes only to be disappointed by something dense and bland but the crucial difference is you don't fall into a state of sadness and hopelessness over dance pancakes at least i hope you don't and you don't take it as personal failure and defeat you don't stop making pancakes because it's impossible and you don't give up
cooking altogether because cooking has suddenly become pointless no you probably do what most people would do in a situation like that which is trying a different recipe the next time around frustration anger disappointment all these things are natural and even necessary reactions when something doesn't go the way you want to but they don't have to be negative they can make you come back stronger and more motivated than before or they can make you curious and more careful in the future instead of just trying another recipe the next time you might think about what did and
didn't work and what you might have to watch out for when looking for a recipe in the future failure is the ever-present master teacher in all things whatever you do wherever you are failure isn't far away something every artist and creative person is intimately familiar with but it doesn't have to be this hostile democracy sword hovering above our heads it's only when failure is perceived as loss or defeat that it becomes something negative because then it stops you from trying and doing whatever it is you want to do but if you just keep going and
continue doing trying and exploring you will still fail but you will fail upwards all the adversity i've had in my life all my troubles and obstacles have strengthened me you may not realize it when it happens but a kick in the teeth might be the best thing in the world for you what if i told you that this quote is by a man who not only went bankrupt once but multiple times and at one point was forced to eat dog food out of a can a man who got his business stolen his ideas laughed at
his visions questioned at every step of his career you'd probably think what a fool but what if i told you that the man's name was walt disney here's another quote by disney to some people i am kind of a merlin who takes lots of crazy chances but rarely makes mistakes i've made some bad ones but fortunately the successes have come along fast enough to cover up the mistakes when you go to bed as many times as i do you're bound to get a good average more than anything else it's disney's tenacity and perseverance that made
him one of the most extraordinary visionaries of the 20th century we only tend to see the positive outcomes when we look at success stories but we rarely get to see the sweat and tears failures and mistakes leading up to them but there's one more aspect to failure that i would like to talk about that might even be more important than everything we touched on until now but before we go there i would like to thank skillshare for sponsoring this video skillshare as you all probably know by now is a great online learning community for creative
people like you and i you can learn about drawing writing making videos or maybe even more importantly for all creative people even learn how to make a dang good cup of coffee if you're like me and you like a good old cup of joe to keep your company with during your musings i recommend you check out michael phillips class on how to brew yourself a proper cup of coffee and at just 10 a month for an unlimited premium membership skillshare also doesn't break the bank but since they are sponsoring this video the first 1000 who
click the link in the description will get a free trial of skillshare premium so i highly encourage you guys to make use of that here's a question for you what's worse than making pancakes and not having them turn out so great exactly not making pancakes at all the only thing that's more frustrating than failure is not doing something because you're afraid to fail again something that seems incredibly obvious in our pancake analogy is not so clear in other aspects of our life i mean think about it you tried your pancake recipe the pancakes didn't turn
out as you hoped but now you're terrified you're dreading the thought of pouring even an ounce of dough into a frying pan because you're afraid of ending up with dance and bland pancakes and you completely give up on the thought of ever tasting soft and fluffy pancakes ever again literally nobody but surprisingly it's always the same story in other aspects of our life you write a book paint a painting open a business and when things don't go the way you like you are afraid of doing it again what if this happens what if that happens
etc etc you become handcuffed by the fear of failure i have put hundreds of hours into paintings that i ended up hating after finishing them i've had exhibitions where i didn't sell a single painting and more recently i've made videos that took me dozens of hours to produce only to see them quickly fade into insignificance and i did all of that despite knowing that there was always a significant risk of failing as bad as failure feels on the moment nothing feels worse than unfinished business unfulfilled dreams and the nagging feeling of what if and here's
one thing i can guarantee you you will fail that's for sure once twice multiple times in the month and years to come doesn't matter what it is you do but if you don't get completely thrown off track when a recipe doesn't work to stress the pancake analogy one last time i can also guarantee you that eventually you will succeed in one form or another whether it's finding the one pancake recipe to rule them all or becoming so good and knowledgeable that you can open a shop or write a book on the topic or realizing after
making hundreds of pancakes that your perfect pancake is actually a waffle whatever it is in the end you will be a million times richer for having made the experiences and who having failed along the way so whenever the fear of failure keeps you from writing the book you always wanted to write from starting the workout routine you always wanted to go on from opening a business you always dreamed of well that's when you might want to remember this weird video on the internet by a random artist about pancakes and failure and how failure is just
the result of a recipe that didn't work for you nothing more and nothing less friends thank you all for watching if you made it this far into the video two things first congrats you have unlocked the secret ending to this video that shows you my studio assistant noni eating pancakes but secondly give the video a like share this video with your friends or consider supporting the channel on patreon if you enjoyed watching it a big thank you to all patrons of the channel for being so amazing and making all of these videos possible and a
big fat thank you to all of you lovely people out there for watching and with that said please hit like subscribe if you're not already a subscriber and yeah have a good one so
