Here’s a Recipe for Art Career Success: Luck, Talent and Attraction Affirmations. Or Not.
Luck, talent and attraction affirmations? If you’re bound and determined to have success as an artist (and what past-his-prime hippie with no art degree isn’t) you might want to consider just what it takes to make it in the art world. Hard work? Yes, definitely. Perseverance and diligence? Certainly. Rhinohide? Oh, God yes; don’t I know it. And then there’s that other stuff: being lucky, having talent and reciting attraction affirmations, aka manifesting.
Hard work, perseverance and diligence come much easier than the last three requirement(s) for success. What does being lucky even mean? How does one summon luck? Fresh rabbit’s foot anyone? Or perhaps a wishbone, horseshoe and a couple of four leaf clovers in your pocket. You can also try a pocket full of acorns (Norse) or shaking the hand of a chimney sweep (U.K.)
But luck can also be about attitude, outlook and perspective. In an article on the Shonda Rhimes Shondaland website, writer Vivian Manning-Schaffel quotes a variety of experts on the topic of luck. Most if not all these researchers don’t define luck as fortuitous events that fall upon some but not all us. Rather, they see luck as the ability to see and capitalize on opportunity no matter the scale. Think serendipity. Dr. Christian Busch, a professor at USC’s at Marshall School of Business defines the word quite simply, “making the best of the unexpected.” (Check his TED talk for a quite poetic tie-in here with farmers and potato washing) No doubt my darkness and negativity will cost me on this strategy.
The Talent Problem When Considering Luck, Talent and Attraction Affirmations to Create Success
Talent is a trickier equation than luck. Are you born with it? Can it be in your genes? Can you spin it as though from straw through hard work, good schooling and a capable mentor? My father was an aspiring commercial artist who sacrificed his dream (apocryphal) for the sake of a nuclear family in the 1950’s. His files contain any number of beautifully rendered greeting cards and birthday celebration posters. They’re all done in a very architectural style of crisp lines and mostly block letters. He tried and failed to emotionally beat that legacy out of me lest I ruin my life. He said it was for the best and my own good.
The problem of course is how much talent is enough to stand out. How much talent is sufficient to make some new idea real and relevant? And is the effort accomplished enough to garner some critical notice and even acclaim. And what about “the hand you're dealt”? Good that I didn’t aspire to the NFL as a youth. My most noteworthy football play involved a collision with a 55-gallon garbage barrel at the beach. Laughter was had by all.
Wiliam Deresiewicz and his book, “The Death of the Artist” (read only if you are both insane and under the influence): “Real talent is rare--a lot rarer than the you-can-do-it boosertism of a consumption-driven culture or our own vanity would have us believe.,” he writes. Deresiewicz argues that market forces urge too many of us to create and sell what we create when in fact we lack talent enough to begin with. Speaking of dead artists…
Luck, talent and attraction affirmations, a divine triumvirate of components for success in the arts. Time to tackle the third ingredient of this creative art monster layer cake: attraction affirmations. Which are what, exactly? If you are of a certain age and include evangelicalism in your background the prosperity gospel/the abundance code may sound more familiar--same thing. This is the land of magical thinking. Or, as Tara Isabella Burton describes it in her New York Times article on the subject: “the idea that reality can and should bend to belief.”
Maybe Try Attraction Affirmations, Not luck or talent?
Attraction affirmations is the idea that you can apply your ability to believe in the service of self interest. Once more, here’s Burton with a further indictment of attraction affirmations/manifesting, “(it’s) a spiritualized gloss on the same deluded logic that suggests that poverty is a choice.” The choice to not think abundantly.
Oops, looks like our creativity layer cake recipe of luck, talent and attraction affirmation seems to have fallen a bit flat. Attraction affirmations are mostly a false promise of prosperity and my tank of talent might be just half full. I do quite like Dr. Busch’s idea of serendipity as the well-honed awareness of potential in unexpected circumstances-a quality that anyone can cultivate. Call it luck, a special sort without need of talismanic magic.
And then there’s my dear friend “Dead Frank'' (d. 2019). His parting advice was always, “Just have fun.”