Welcome to Morning Pages, a newsletter sharing inspirations to help you cultivate creativity and fulfillment in life.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been reading the book “Turning Pro” by Steven Pressfield. If you want to develop your creative talent from an amateur to a professional, this book has many pieces of wisdom.
I have been contemplating one idea from the book, that is, many people have a shadow career. Here’s how Steven explained it in the book.
Sometimes, when we’re terrified of embracing our true calling, we’ll pursue a shadow calling instead. The shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same.
But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us.
Are you pursuing a shadow career?
Are you getting your Ph.D. in Elizabethan Studies because you’re afraid to write the tragedies and comedies you know you have inside you?
Are you living the drugs-and-booze half of the musician’s life, without actually writing the music?
Are you working in a support capacity for an innovator because you’re afraid to risk being an innovator yourself?
If you’re dissatisfied with your current life, ask yourself what your current life is a metaphor for.
That metaphor will point you toward your true calling.
How to tell if you’re in a shadow career?
Psychology Today suggested asking yourself these questions.
What emotions do you feel throughout the day?
Are you frustrated—and filled with envy when you see other people fulfilling their dreams?
How tired are you at the end of the day? Why?
How much of your fatigue is due to doing things you don’t want to do or holding back your talents or gift?
Are you bored?
Is creative self-expression important to you, and are you stuck promoting someone else’s creativity?
Are anxiety and/or depression playing a role here?
When you decide to honor your deepest desire, where would you go?
I love design. But deep down, I’m an artist at heart.
It took me a very long time to overcome my inner critic and say out loud that I am an artist. Today I still hide this identity behind being a coach, a professor, and a designer.
Through this Tweet by Tatiana Mac, many designers have expressed that they felt like trapped artists or writers.
You dedicated years and years to design products, graphics, and experiences for companies and brands. You felt incredibly fortunate to reach millions of people with your designs. You made great relationships and earned your place in a highly competitive industry. But you also long for creative self-expression. You want to make something that speaks to your heart and soul. You are getting tired of promoting creativity on behalf of someone else.
If that is you, how might you express your most tender and creative self?
Everyone begins their creative journey as an amateur. For some, they will start a 100-day project, write a weekly newsletter, start a podcast, or simply spend more time learning a tool.
But for some amateurs, the journey doesn’t stop there. They have experimented enough to know their next steps: turning pro.
What are you afraid of?
Before designer Elle Luna became an artist and author, she kept dreaming about an empty white room filled with light. She began her search on Craigslist and found one room that matched just like the one in her dream. She rented that space and spent days pouring her vision onto the canvas.
Her journey of turning pro was no shortage of uncertainty and fear. Her deepest fear was the terrifying prospect of failure. She wrote down all her fears and made a Worst Case Scenario list. From there, line by line, she walked through each one and had honest conversations with her fears.
It is here, standing at the cliff’s edge, peering down below, hearing the siren’s call, that we feel the terrifying prospect of abandonment, failure, and humiliation.
And this is the exact moment when people decide against taking the leap — to avoid that great unknown, that transformative place where nothing is written, nothing is guaranteed, and everything is possible.
— Elle Luna, The Crossroad of Should and Must
Our shadow careers provide us lots of stability. Stepping away from a shadow career is being able to thrive with uncertainty. It’s about realizing you have a unique gift, and your job is to share that gift with the world. It’s about turning pro and showing up whether you are inspired or not.
Are you living a shadow career?
I would love to hear your thoughts.
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Yuan Studio offers a series of coaching offerings to support creative professionals to play bigger in their careers and lives. Want to get in touch? You’re welcome to comment here or reach out on Twitter and LinkedIn.