Are you Ready for the Improv 2020's? Guideline #12 : Aim to be Underrated

Getting attention for making something stimulates the human being in a way that causes us to want to do more making.  The problem with craving attention is that it eats up a lot of our energy.  We get some attention and that feels good, so we immediately want more.  Where does it end?  If we are disappointed that only 12 people came to our show, then it doesn't matter how many come, we will be disappointed because that is how we have trained ourselves to think.

Someone once told me that some famous musician advices that there is always one person in the audience who needs to be there.  Play for her.

Isn't it possible to make the choice to thrive off the pleasure of making rather than the attention for making?

Isn't it a skill we can develop, like being able to walk a tight rope?

If we practice focusing on the making, and practice recognizing opinions as being light and ephemeral as smoke*, we can begin to diminish the power of emotions that drain our energy and breed our contempt: jealousy, greed, self-loathing.  We all have these emotions.  But by practicing allowing them to pass through us without becoming attached to them, we free up energy for our making.

Underrated artists have more time for making.  Underrated artists are more free.  Underrated artists don't have to please.  Consider becoming an underrated artist today.

* Just think of how easily our opinions change depending on the time of day, the weather, our mood, who we are with, our health, our expectations, our beliefs, our influences, our status, our clothes, our income, our sleep, our nutrition, our cravings, our addictions, our thirst, our comfort, etcetera.

all drawings selected from the tiny collaborative book "devices" 

Imagine City Park collection