Starving Artist No More Jennifer Jill Araya

One of my coaching clients reached out to me this week regarding a task that she and I had discussed at length during a session a couple months ago, and she confessed to me that she hadn’t done it yet. What’s more, she wasn’t really sure why she hadn’t done it. There wasn’t anything stopping her or getting in her way. She told me, “I’m just not doing it, and I know I have to.”

Have you been there? Have you felt paralyzed in the face of something you know you need to do in your creative business, but you just can’t get it done for some reason? Have you found yourself procrastinating on tasks that need to get done, and not really knowing why you’re procrastinating, or how to stop that procrastinating? I know I have. I know this coaching client is definitely not alone, and neither are you! Today, let’s figure out together how to say goodbye to procrastination.

In this episode, you will learn:


What common causes of procrastination might be tripping you up.
How to determine why this task is so hard for you to do.
Why the stories that you are telling yourself matter, and how to edit those stories to cultivate a supportive mindset that will help you do your creative work.
How other people can support you and provide accountability to you in your creative work.
What positive steps you can take to get the task done and say goodbye to procrastination!

In this episode, I mention two of my coaching programs, the Thriving Artists Academy and the Thriving Narrators Retreat. You can learn more about both opportunities on my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com. The Thriving Narrators Retreat is August 22-25, 2024 in Cincinnati, OH. 

In this episode, I refer to two past episodes of this podcast:


01https://www.starvingartistnomore.com/blog/what-if-you-could5: 
016: The Six Components of a Thriving Creative Business 

I also mention this TED talk by Lori Gottlieb.  

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. Full transcripts of every episode will always be available at the Starving Artist No More Blog.

Thank you for listening. Please feel free to reach out to me at www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, with any questions, comments, or feedback. I'd love to hear from you.

Every creative has moments in their career that are moments of celebration, moments of pure excitement. And usually, when I talk to artists about those moments, they think about the big career milestones: that huge award that they won or were nominated for, the incredible review they received, the prestigious fellowship they were awarded, the amazing project they won. These are all big, wonderful career events in your life as an artist business owner that absolutely should be celebrated. But they aren’t the only moments that deserve celebration. The problem with focusing only on those big, external indicators of career success is that they are almost always things controlled by other people, which by definition means they are rare and unpredictable. Instead, I want to encourage you to focus on celebrating the small wins in your creative life. After all, doing the work is the win. Let’s discuss.

In this episode, you will learn:


What “wins” to celebrate in your life as an artist businessowner.
How focusing on small wins can help you to have a mindset of joy and excitement around your creative work.
Why focusing only on the final outcome causes you to worry about the wrong things.
How being a creative entrepreneur is similar to being a medieval merchant.
What it means to “send out ships” in your creative life.
What it looks like in your life as an artist to focus on what you can control.

 In this episode, I mention the Thriving Narrators Retreat, which is August 22-25, 2024 in Cincinnati, OH. You can learn more about this exciting growth opportunity for audiobook narrators on my website, https://www.starvingartistnomore.com/thrivingnarratorsretreat.

I refer to several past episodes of this podcast:


017: What You Can Control
032: Progress, Not Perfection
040: Small Steps
051: Celebrations Matter

I also share a quote from this X (aka Twitter) post by Billy Oppenheimer.

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. Full transcripts of every episode will always be available at the Starving Artist No More Blog.

Thank you for listening. Please feel free to reach out to me at www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, with any questions, comments, or feedback. I'd love to hear from you.

Last week’s podcast episode was all about the importance of acknowledging the hard things in your life as a creative entrepreneur, but if you stop there, you’re only seeing part of the picture. Yes, much in the life of an artist is really difficult, but so much is amazing as well. We get to create for a living! We get to share our artistic ideas with the world! What a gift that is! But if we don’t take time to intentionally acknowledge those good things, we run the risk of not even noticing that they happened. Our brains are primed to pay attention to and remember the bad, not the good. In order to make sure we recognize and appreciate the good things that happen in our creative lives, we need to celebrate them. Today, we’ll talk about why that’s so important and how you can incorporate celebration into your creative process. Celebrations matter.

In this episode, you will learn:


What social psychology research can teach us about how to navigate stressful situations using celebrations.
What the negativity bias is, and how celebrations can help us overcome that bias.
How celebrating can help us identify the strategies that work within our creative businesses.
Why celebrations are vital to developing habits that support you and your artistic work.
What practical steps you can take to make celebration part of your creative process, benefiting you and your business.

 In this episode, I announced the Thriving Narrators Retreat DEI Scholarship. You can learn more about this scholarship on my website, https://www.starvingartistnomore.com/thrivingnarratorsretreat.

I also talked about the Thriving Narrators Retreat itself, which is August 22-25, 2024 in Cincinnati, OH. Again, you can learn more about this exciting growth opportunity for audiobook narrators on my website, https://www.starvingartistnomore.com/thrivingnarratorsretreat.

In this episode, I refer to two past episodes of this podcast:


016: The Six Components of a Thriving Creative Business
050: Acknowledge the Hard Stuff

I also mention several books that I have read and that I feel confident recommending for those who want more information: 


The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
Atomic Habits by James Clear
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

I share a quote from this TED talk given by Shawn Achor in 2011, and I reference this episode of the NPR Life Kit podcast, which is summarized here. 

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. Full transcripts of every episode will always be available at the Starving Artist No More Blog.

Thank you for listening. Please feel free to reach out to me at www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, with any questions, comments, or feedback. I'd love to hear from you.

The life of a creative entrepreneur is a difficult one. From a culture that doesn’t value our artistic work, instead telling us we should starve, to the difficulty of dealing with business administration tasks that many of us were never formally educated to handle, the reality of being an artist business owner is not an easy one. You’ve picked a hard road, my friend. And one frequent reaction to this difficulty that I see in my colleagues and in my coaching clients is what I like to call the ostrich response: sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the hard things. If you ignore the things you don’t like, they’ll disappear, right? Oh if only it were that easy! Ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away. It just allows it to fester. It’s not easy, but there is value in acknowledging the hard stuff. In today’s episode, we’re going to look at those hard things together.

In this episode, you will learn:


How acknowledging the difficulties of our creative entrepreneurship life gives us power.
Why we instinctively want to ignore problems in our work.
How to overcome that instinct to have a more helpful stance.
What practical steps to take when you’re feeling stuck by a problem in your business.
How we can pay attention to our difficult emotions and learn from them in the process.

In this episode, I announced the Thriving Narrators Retreat DEI Scholarship. You can learn more about this scholarship on my website, https://www.starvingartistnomore.com/thrivingnarratorsretreat.

I also talked about the Thriving Narrators Retreat itself, which is August 22-25, 2024 in Cincinnati, OH. Again, you can learn more about this exciting growth opportunity for audiobook narrators on my website, https://www.starvingartistnomore.com/thrivingnarratorsretreat.

In this episode, I refer to one past episode, 038: The Price of Success is Failure. I also reference this TED talk by Lori Gottlieb. 

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. Full transcripts of every episode will always be available at the Starving Artist No More Blog.

Thank you for listening. Please feel free to reach out to me at www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, with any questions, comments, or feedback. I'd love to hear from you.

I know you’ve been there. Your task list is overflowing, and you’re overwhelmed. You’ve got more to do than you can possibly complete in the time available. Perhaps you’re in a feast period in your creative career, meaning your project calendar is jampacked full of fabulous projects that you’re excited to work on. Which is great, except that it means all of your time is spent heads-down creating, with no time left over for the necessary administrative tasks that come with running a business. Or maybe life has gone sideways on you, and you’re dealing with time-consuming complications in your personal life, resulting in a tight squeeze on the time available for your business work, whether that’s creative tasks or administrative to-dos. Regardless of the reason, you’ve found yourself in a place where decisions need to be made. You can’t do everything. So what do you choose to do, and what do you choose to leave undone? How do you prioritize? How did you decide what really matters to you, and how do you make sure your actions reflect those values? Today, we’re going to look at some of those hard questions. We’re going to talk about where your priorities lie.

In this episode, you will learn:


What my recent experience during a particularly hectic time has taught me about how to prioritize within my creative business.
Why I intentionally chose to take some time off from this podcast and how I used that time to focus on other areas of my creative work.
How you can use the Six Components of a Thriving Creative Business to guide your priority decisions when time gets tight.
Why focusing on these six areas within your business is even more important when life and work gets overwhelming

In this episode, I announced the Thriving Narrators Retreat, which is August 22-25, 2024 in Cincinnati, OH. You can learn more about this exciting growth opportunity for audiobook narrators on my website, https://www.starvingartistnomore.com/thrivingnarratorsretreat.

I also mentioned the Thriving Artists Academy. You can learn more about this dynamic and supportive community on my  website, www.starvingartistnomore.com/thrivingartistsacademy.

In this episode, I refer to several past episodes of this podcast:


007: Working in your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot
008: Developing Asynchronous Income
016: The Six Components of a Thriving Creative Business
044: Consistency Is Hard

I also mention the Spoon Theory of chronic illness, and I share the Merriam-Webster definition of "priority."

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. Full transcripts of every episode will always be available at the Starving Artist No More Blog.

Thank you for listening. Please feel free to reach out to me at www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, with any questions, comments, or feedback. I'd love to hear from you.

As this episode is originally being released, it’s the day after Christmas 2023. Last year, for the podcast episode between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I narrated a Christmas story for you, and truthfully, that episode is one of my favorite podcast episodes of the entire first season! I’d like to make that holiday storytelling habit a tradition here on the Starving Artist No More podcast. So today, I have another Christmas story to share with you: The Elves and the Shoemaker by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. Full transcripts of every episode will always be available at the Starving Artist No More Blog.

Thank you for listening. Please feel free to reach out to me at www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, with any questions, comments, or feedback. I'd love to hear from you.