It’s better to be sorry than safe

Vulnerability is all about uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. As psychologist Brene Brown says, “It‘s scary, but it’s a powerful and authentic way to live. It’s the core, the heart, and the center of meaningful human experiences. The people you trust might or might not trust you back. They might be in your life for a long time or they might not. They might be terrifically loyal or they might stab you in the back.”

From a work perspective, think about the vulnerability it takes to share your ideas with the world, not knowing how your work will be perceived. Will you be applauded, criticized or absolutely impaled.

Enter Seth Godin. This prolific author ended 2012 with a bang with three new exciting titles, two of which are V is for Vulnerable: Life Outside the Comfort Zone and The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly. The former, a companion book to the latter, is a full-color, illustrated “ABC book” that looks and feels just like the big letters and big visual reading fares you grew up with. But it’s not for kids; it’s for adults and any professional who works as hard for the money, for the title and for personal and professional success. The tome features the art works of Hugh MacLeod, the online world’s much-loved and preferred cartoonist. It encapsulates 26 of Seth Godin’s principles about treating your work as an art form. 

The Icarus Deception is all about respect and submission and reminds you of the hazards of getting too overconfident and cocky. But the author poses the question: why should your most valuable skill be your ability to follow orders? And why shouldn’t you fly really high? In the book, Godin calls for bolder thinking and acting. He asks you to go about your work as if it were art — with the idea of “good enough” far from your minds.

Art, in Godin’s context, is not a gene or a specific talent. It’s an attitude, available to anyone who has a vision that others don’t, and the guts to do something about it. He cites Steve Jobs, Henry Ford and Martin Luther King Jr. as artists, individuals who invested in the things that scale: creativity, emotional labor and grit. As Godin states, “The path of the artist isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s your only chance to stand up, stand out, and make a difference.” Here’s the A to Z of how you can see the world differently — the way an artist does.

Anxiety. Be familiar with failure in advance. Tell yourself enough strikingly clear stories about the worst possible outcome of your work and you’ll soon come to believe them. Talk about negative visualization and self-fulfilling images.  Worry is not preparation, and anxiety or fear doesn’t make you or your plans better. 

Balance. You can find it by losing it, and commit to feet in motion until you are like a floating log spinning around in water.

Commitment. It’s the only thing that gets you through the chasm.  It takes you from “That’s a fine idea” to “It’s done.”

Dance. Dance with fear. Dance with resistance. Dance with each other. Dance with art.

Effort. It’s not the point, impact is. If you solve the problem in three seconds but have the guts to share it with someone it’s still art. And if you move 10,000 pounds of granite but the result doesn’t connect with someone, I’m sorry for your calluses, but you haven’t made art.

Feedback. This can either be a crutch or a weapon. Use it to make your work smaller, safer and more likely to please everyone (and fail in the long run). Or use it as a lever, to further push you to embrace what you fear (and what you’re capable of). 

Gifts. They are the essence of art. Art isn’t made as part of an even exchange, it is your chance to create imbalance, which leads to connection. To share your art is a requirement of making it.

Heroes. They are people who take risks for the right reasons. Real art is a heroic act. Hipsters, on the other hand, are pretenders who haven’t risked a thing but like to play the part.

Initiative. It’s the privilege of picking yourself; you’re not given initiative, you take it. Pick yourself. If you’re not getting what you want, it may be because you’re not making good enough art, often enough.

Joy. It’s different from pleasure or delight or fun. Joy is the satisfaction of connection, the well-earned emotion you deserve after shipping art that made a difference.

Knife. It works best when it has an edge. To take the edge off, to back off, to play it safe, to smooth it out, to please the uninterested masses — it’s not what the knife is for.

LMNO. This used to be the single letter of the alphabet. The artist seeks to break apart the unbreakable and to combine the “uncombinable.” And L is for lonely, because everyone is, and the artist does the endless work of helping us conquer that loneliness.

More. This is the goal of the artist. Better is the artist’s dream. Better connection is the point of the work. More stuff leads to a world of scarcity, while better connected creates abundance.

No. The word feels safe, while “yes” is dangerous indeed. Yes to possibility and yes to risk and yes to looking someone in the eye and telling the truth.

One-buttock. It’s what Ben Zander (composer, music director, arranger of classical music) would have you do — to play the piano and mean it. To sit up, to lean in, to perform as if this was your very best, your very last chance to let the song inside of you get out.

Pain. It’s the truth of art. Art is not a hobby or a pastime. It is the result of an internal battle royal, one between the quest for safety and the desire to matter.

Quality. Like feedback, it is a trap. To focus on reliably meeting specifications (a fine definition of quality) is to surrender the real work, which is to matter. Quality of performance is a given, it’s not the point.

Remix. Reuse, respect, recycle, revisit, reclaim, revere. Art doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Shame. It is the flipside of vulnerability.  You avoid opening yourself to the connection art brings because you fear that you will finally be seen as the fraud that you are.

Tether. The safety cable you refuse to use. Art feels fatal, because art makes us vulnerable. The Flying Wallendas, the legendary trapeze and tightrope family, have a slogan: “If we fall, we die.”

Umbrellas. They keep you from getting wet. Why on earth would you use one? Getting wet is the entire point.

Vulnerable. The only way you can feel when you truly share the art you’ve made. When you share it, when you connect, you have shifted all the power and made yourself naked in front of the person you’ve given the gift of our art to. You have no excuses, no manual to point to, and no standard operating procedure to protect. And that is part of your gift.

Warranty. In merchantability, it is a legal principle that guarantees that something you buy will do what the seller promises it will. Your work in art doesn’t come with one. Your art might not work and your career might not work either. If it doesn’t work today, it might not work tomorrow either. But your practice is to persist until it does.

Xebec. It is a pirate ship, the real kind, not the sort that selfish, evil, violent pretend pirates in Somalia use. Artist pirates steal in order to remix and then give back.

Youth. It isn’t a number. It’s an attitude. So many disruptive artists have been youngsters, even the old ones. Art isn’t a genetic or chronological destiny. It’s a choice, open to anyone willing to trade pain in exchange for magic.

Zabaglione. It’s a delightful Italian dessert consisting mostly of well-whipped foam. It takes a lot of effort to make by hand. Each batch comes out a little different from the previous one. It’s often delicious. It doesn’t last long. It’s evanescent. And then you have to (get to) make another batch.

Icarus is a legendary character with astonishing staying power. His father made him wings to help him run away from the full-headed monster’s maze, and gave him a fair warning not to fly too close to the sun lest his wings thaw out. Astounded to be flying, however, Icarus didn’t heed the warning and fell down into the ocean. It’s the classic tale of hubris and vulnerability. It’s also the inspiration to the new truth that Godin is positing: It’s better to be sorry than safe. You need to fly higher than ever.

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