'Fear of success' is a future-looking idea: it is about your relationship to the success that might come your way one day. ‘Anxiety of success’ is a now-looking idea: it is about your relationship to the success you are currently experiencing...‘Fear of success’ can be dealt with cognitively: you notice how your thoughts are weakening your resolve and you replace those self-sabotaging thoughts with thoughts that serve you. The anxiety that arises from actual success, on the other hand, must be dealt with behaviorally. You must do something with the new offers coming in, the fan mail, the interview requests, the invitations to excess and distraction.

“You need to play the notes correctly,” she said in a small voice. “Of course.” I paused. “But is that the music? Many great musicians have said that if you demand that they play all the notes correctly they can’t also make music." ... “I keep hearing ‘No heart!’ ‘No heart!’" Tears came. “What am I supposed to do at this point? Go see the Wizard of Oz and get a heart?” I smiled. “Well, I have a simple solution. Feel free to play in a heartfelt way and the hell with the notes.”

In order for you to live an authentic, meaningful life, which is the principal remedy for the depression creative people experience, you must feel that 1) the plan of your life is meaningful, 2) the work you do is meaningful, and 3) the way your spend your time is meaningful. These are three separate but related tasks, each with its own logic, demands, and obstacles.

We tend to associate the word “grandeur” with events like royal weddings and sights like the Grand Canyon. Hotels are grand, canals are grand, and cruise ships are grand. But something about that way of thinking prevents us from demanding grandeur from the other stuff of existence, like an image that we craft, a jam that we jar, or a kiss that we give. For more reasons that we can count, grandeur isn’t very present in our daily lives.

What is the relationship between the criticism you receive and the criticism you inflict on yourself? Why do so many people inflict daily doses of self-criticism upon themselves in neurotic ways, that is, in ways that are patently unjustified, unhealthy and self-sabotaging? To what extent does a penchant for self-criticism turn uneventful episodes of minor criticism into toxic, wounding events?

The first key to handling criticism is the existential key. Until you decide that your path in life matters, that it is ultimately your responsibility to live by your cherished principles, and that you and only you can create a life worth living, you will have insufficient motivation to put criticism in its place.

In this series, adapted from my book Toxic Criticism, we examine the ways that criticism and self-criticism interfere with our ability to find our life purpose and live as strongly, passionately, and effectively as we would like to live.

Most of us would be quick to say that we are free to think just about anything and to express ourselves in any way we see fit. In reality, artists do a lot of measuring, somewhere just out of conscious awareness, about what is safe or seemly to reveal and what is unsafe or unseemly.

Interview by Janet Grace Riehl -
Eric Maisel: Even before you can make meaning, you must nominate yourself as the meaning-maker in your own life and fashion a central connection with yourself, one that is more aware, active, and purposeful than the connection most people fashion with themselves.

The goal of a creative mindfulness practice—the kind of practice that you really want—is not only the nonjudgmental observation of your thoughts but complete right thinking that leads to authenticity, creativity, and mental health.