Developing Creative Grit With Artist Korynn Morrison

Daring Creatively: Unfiltered is an Australian art podcast where Sydney-based contemporary artist Korynn Morrison picks up the phone, drops a surprise topic into the conversation, and hits record.

But today is a little different. Today Korynn is talking directly to you.

Pull out a notebook. Imagine she is sitting right next to you. Because this episode is not coming from Korynn the expert, it's coming from Korynn in the trenches, doing the exact same thing you are doing.

Today's topic is creative grit. And it keeps coming up everywhere, in coaching sessions, at openings, in every conversation she is having right now. So something needed to come out.

In this solo episode Korynn talks about why grit is the one thing that no market downturn, no budget crisis, and no struggling art industry can take from you, the formula for grit and the two very different kinds of passion that drive it, why harmonious passion and obsessive passion are not the same thing and which one is actually serving you, why the only way to develop grit is through failure and why that is actually good news, the gymnast story that explains everything, her What If journal and how she uses it every single morning to flip her thinking, waking up at 2am wanting to unpack the crate before sending her work overseas, and why if you are failing right now you are absolutely right on track.

This one will light a fire underneath you. Consider yourself warned.

If you are an artist who needs a reminder that every failure is just another brick in the wall of your creative life, this episode is for you.

New episodes drop whenever the call happens.

Korynn Morrison Relevant Links

Join My Inner Circle: https://www.korynnmorrison.com/mailing-list

Creative Coaching & Mentorship: https://www.thecuriositycoach.com.au/creative-coaching

Visit My Website: https://www.korynnmorrison.com/

Find me on Instagram HERE

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

So I wanted to take a moment today to just sit with each and every one of you on a very personal, individual level, which is kind of a weird thing to do when this is a podcast. But from an energetic perspective today, I just want each of you to take a seat, pull out a notebook, and imagine that I'm sitting across from you or next to you. We say next to you, because I don't personally like sitting opposite people, even when I'm coaching them. Because what I want to talk about today is not coming from the perspective of, you know, Corinne the expert. It's coming from the perspective of me being right there with you in the creative pursuit with my own goals, my own ambitions, my own struggles. In many ways, I don't think it matters what phase of our creative life we are currently at, whether you be someone who is just picking up a paintbrush for the first time, or someone who is exhibiting in multiple countries all over the world. Makes no difference for today's talk. Today I want to talk about creative grit. And it is a topic that I just can't seem to get away from at the moment, no matter who I'm talking to, or the conversations I'm having at openings or interviews that I'm having with people. This concept of creative grit is just recycling at the moment. And that tells me that something very specific needs to come out at the moment. Now, there is a lot happening in the world at the moment. I feel like I'm listening to equal amounts of incredible things happening for people, contrasted with things that people are really worried, fearful about. I want to pivot that a little bit for you today. And the formula to grit is perseverance times passion. Write that down. Perseverance times passion. Perseverance is pretty self-explanatory. And yet, I feel like I have this conversation with a lot of creatives too. You can't just talk your way through a creative life. At the end of the day, you have to be showing up over and over and over and over and over and over. I could keep going and going and going. You have to keep showing up and making the work. But it is very, very hard to show up day in, day out, or whatever your uh system is for yourself, however many hours you seem to get in a week in, whatever that chosen system is for yourself, you still have to consistently show up. Perseverance, right? It's hard to show up with perseverance if you have no passion for what you're doing. But passion is a really interesting thing. Like I'm sure that all of us, you know, can sit back, close our eyes, and you say the word passion, and someone will pop into your head. There'll be someone that you look up to in your life that is a passionate person that just immediately pops into your head and makes you smile, right? Passionate people, they're magnetic. The world opens up for passionate people. But there are two different sides of passion. This is what I want you all to understand. Passion has a balancing point. One side of passion is called harmonious passion. And that is the kind of passion that is generated by the love of what you do. It is generated by being in the process, with the process, present to the process. And all of the little sparkling nudges that you get from your creative process creates a cycle. It creates momentum. And that momentum gets bigger and bigger and bigger. That is harmonious passion. It's being in the flow. Then there is this other side of passion, and that is called obsessive passion. Now, obsessive passion, which I am completely guilty of. And in actual fact, it is the hardest for me to get out of. I am, in many ways, an obsessively passionate person. I love the struggle. But one thing that we need to keep in mind is that obsessive passion is often fueled by fear, by guilt, and by lack. Write that down. So just to summarize, grit is perseverance times passion. There are two different sides to passion. Harmonious passion is generated by the love of what we do. Obsessive passion, which is the other side of passion, is generated by the fear and lack of what we don't have. Okay? Or the fear of failure, the fear of our own personal power. Okay? So it is a really tricky balance to navigate, especially if you are a creative whose income comes from the work that you produce. The moment that people, especially clients of mine, the moment that they begin to start replacing their normal working life with income generated from their art, this is where that obsessive passion, you need to really strategically navigate it. And you need to be able to have someone in your court that helps you see and helps you pick up on when you're kind of teetering on that end. I still have people like that in my life that help me with this. Now, I want to go back and I just want to share a little bit of a story that will help you understand this concept of grit, because it is very interesting, even though I have nothing to do with gymnastics anymore. That part of my life was over long, long ago. And yet, because it was my entire existence for so long, being a gymnast and then being a coach and then running a gymnastics club and judging and all of that sort of stuff, there are very specific coaching points that directly correspond between a creative life and what I used to help these tiny little gymnasts with. And I want to share a little bit of a story today. So when young kids used to come into the program, I was the head coach that used to look at these kids. They used to come in and some of them were, you know, five, six, seven years old, however old they were. Very, very young, though. And, you know, they used to come in and you would think that with a very high-level program like that, the first thing a coach would look at is their skill. That is incorrect. In the exact same way as when I sit down with a new coaching client, the first thing that client wants to do is they want to show me their work. They want to pull out their portfolio, they want to show me their creative voice, they want to tell me all the things that they feel is wrong about their process. And every time I have to go, whoa, whoa, hold up. Your work comes from you. We're gonna do the you first. In the same way as what I used to do with these tiny little beautiful humans that used to come into the gym. I used to look at them and I used to watch them. They used to just go and do the lesson. I used to observe them. I didn't used to pull them out and check their skills or anything like that. I just used to watch them. And I used to know within the space of one hour whether a child was going to be a champion, whether that child was going to be able to cope with the program. Why? Because I used to look for grit. I did not look for skill. I used to look at each and every one of them for the grit that they brought. Now, you think, grit? Grit? What six-year-old has grit? Oh, I can tell you. I can tell you that there are some people that are just born with it. But what I will also tell you is that as much as skills, you know, in that circumstance didn't really matter because I could teach skills, just like in art. You can learn skills. You can learn how to paint. You can learn how to develop your creative voice over time by doing the work. You can do a workshop, okay? Skills is not the thing. What you can't teach is grit. The only way you develop grit is through failure. Sometimes it was the kids that walked into the gym that had gone through really hard things. You know what? I used to have this little kid. I'm gonna tell you this story actually. Um, never forget this kid. She came into the program when she was really young, and her mum, the first thing that her mum came up to me and told me was about all the little problems that she'd had with her heart as a as a young child, and how we had to be really careful, you know, she was a typical mother that was very, very concerned with, you know, putting too much pressure on her daughter and her heart and all of this sort of stuff. And while this mum was telling me all these problems and potential bad things that could happen, I am watching this kid. And I kid you not, the amount of times this kid fell over and pulled herself back up. Sure, there were times where she used to cry and whatnot, but she pulled herself back up so fast because she had already gone through hard things. She knew what it felt like to fail. Why is it that it is so important to allow your kids to fail when they're young? They literally cannot develop a sense of self without it. Just like in creativity, if you do not allow yourself to fail, epically fail, step out of your comfort zone, you know, make bad work. You literally cannot develop grit. And grit is the one thing that you will need in order to succeed in this creative life. So, anyway, this little kid, I watched her for a lesson. I didn't test any of her skill set or anything like that, but I just watched her and I was like, she's gonna be a champion because of her attitude. Because even from the age of however she was, she might have been five or six at the time, I could tell that her focus on the goal was bigger than her failure. And I had multiple children like this come through the program. Pretty much every single child that I had in this program was wired like that. They had this hunger, this intense hunger about them, where it did not matter how many times they fell on their head, it was not going to stop them. This is the other thing. Perhaps this is why, you know, even for me as a creative, I'm not scared of failing at all. I can honestly say I'm not. We had to let them fall in the safest possible way. But after they made a big error or they had a bit of an injury, the one thing that we had to do as coaches is in the shortest space of time that was safe, we had to get these kids back up to do the skill that they fell in. And it was really hard at times. But we knew as coaches, if we could get them to get up and do that skill without falling again, they'd have it forever. That was developing grit. Now, how do we do that in our creative life? Like when I'm sitting down, pretend you're sitting with me right now. Because when I'm coaching people, I'm not coaching people from the perspective of Corinne, the professional, Corinne, the person that knows everything. God no. I hate that. I coach people from the perspective of me, Corinne, in the trenches doing the thing that you are doing. That is why I get results out of people. Because I don't want to be the expert. I want to sit down and go, hey, let's talk about this side by side. Let's talk about these things that are really hard. Let's nurture this grit. Let's how do we develop more grit around this? And so, how do we do that in a creative sense? How do we develop grit for ourselves? Like I said at the start, the only way you can develop grit is by failing. How do we fail? We have to step up to the plate. We have to do uncomfortable things. We have to send those emails that we're scared to send. We have to make the work that we're scared to make. We have to put work on the wall in front of people when we've never done it before, and stand back and allow people to see us, to see all of us. It is terrifying. And yet, it is the only way that we develop grit. And one thing I will say, one conversation that I feel like I have a lot with people, people are either in one of two boats. They're they either fear failure, so they fear what will happen if it fails. I'm going to talk about that more in a second. Or they fear their own power. Now, fearing your own power, that's a really interesting one. I feel like we could probably do a whole episode on just that. Let's go back to fear of failure, right? One thing that I like to do with my coaching clients when they say, I'm scared of failing. First of all, you know, the first thing we do with coaching clients is we ask what their version of success is. Figure out, you know, what it is that they individually want, because everyone's version of success is very, very different. But when it comes to failure, it's really interesting when you sit down and you ask someone, well, what does failure look like? Because sometimes we just cycle through these thoughts in our heads and they just go over and over and over again. But when you speak it out in a sentence, so for example, I was sitting down with someone the other day who has an exhibition coming up and, you know, is scared of putting the work up there for the first time. And I'm like, well, is it scared that it's going to be well received or scared that nothing's going to sell? What is this failure? And she's like, I'm scared I'm going to do all this work and put it up on the wall, and no one will appreciate it, and nothing will sell. And so we spoke through this and we we basically got to the point of building this picture of her failure. And then right at the end of it, I said to her, So, the exhibition is over. Nothing's sold. Everyone's seen it. People think that you haven't done the work that you should have done. Now what? And she's like, Oh, well, I guess I just make more work. I'm like, exactly. That failure that we often consider failure, is it actually gonna stop us? Like, did someone die? No. The version of failure is actually so minute in the very big sphere of our creative lives. When we think about, you know, the potential of what could happen across a lifetime of creative work, the amount of exhibitions that we are going to have, or the amount of work that we're going to produce for ourselves, whatever your definition of success is. That little thing of failure, that image that we've created in our head, when we actually speak it out loud, in the grand scheme of things, it's not that big. You know? Like, I had this moment the other week. This was before I sent all my work off over to the US and over to Canada. And it's been a wow of a time the last um number of months, however many months it's been. But it's been a huge roller coaster. And I certainly had some grow growing pains. Like there were moments where the work was all crated up. I'd photographed it, you know, it had been sitting in the crate. And I literally woke up in the middle of the night at like 2 a.m. thinking to myself, oh, maybe I'll just go to the studio and I'll undo the crate and I'll just unwrap all the work and I'll just check if I like it still. Like literally that way of thinking was creeping into my dreams, right? You question everything when you're about to put your work out into the world because I know non-creative people don't understand, but it is like standing naked in front of everyone, right? It's a big deal. It's hard. And I remember sitting up in the middle of the night and thinking, that is so ridiculous. That is so ridiculous, Corinne. And yet this was the pattern going on in my head. And then I got to, you know, the studio the next day, and I thought, will I undo the crate? Will I undo the crate? And then I looked at my studio wall. And there are two words with no studio. Well, there's lots of words, there's lots of sentences, there's lots of quotes written on my studio wall. And those two words were what if. And I just have them there. What if, dot, dot, dot. And what it does is It forces me to flip any negative thinking that I've got. And so I walked up to the studio, and instead of like unboxing the crate and going through this nonsensical unpacking, deciding if I like the work or not, I looked at the wall and I went, what if? What if it all works out? What if that work in that crate is gonna give me so much momentum that I never saw coming? What if? Now, what if? I want to encourage you all to do something, actually. This is something I've been doing for quite some time. It's one of the reasons why those two words are on the wall. Excuse me, let me just have a drink. I am. I have to admit, I've always been one of those people that wears rose-colored glasses around everywhere I go. I'm pretty good at not looking at the negative side of anything. I have a whole bunch of tools in my back pocket that I use to just flip my perspective constantly. And yet there is still that business side of my brain that has to carefully negotiate between sending money overseas and the cost of international shipping. And so my business brain is on too. Don't get me wrong. I'm not just a rainbow unicorn that doesn't consider all these things. However, I have always done my morning pages. And this year, my morning pages have shifted a little bit. And instead of calling them morning pages, I started this whole new journal for myself called my what if journal. And instead of my morning pages being about, you know, whinging and whining and recycling all the things going on in my head, I have noticed that this year my automatic writing has been very forward-thinking. And every time I start in the morning, I start every day with what if. And then I just let everything kind of fall out from there. So it's now like a what if journal. So for example, I'll wake up, I'll be questioning everything that there is to question about a work that I'm working on, or a new price point that's been set for my work, or um, you know, just anything. And I'll just sit down and I'll go, what if? And I will just let ramble and flip any of that negative. So for example, um the other day, I was worried about, you know, sales not happening, happening immediately because there's lots of money that's been emptied on this international shipping and all of that sort of stuff. And in my journal, I wrote down, what if, what if currently, right while I'm sitting here, there is a table of people overseas having a coffee with my portfolio, looking at my work, considering how they would like to hang my work at this art fair? What if this art fair is the first thing that generates all of this new momentum for this next year's worth of my practice? What if this triggers my first ever solo show in the US? What if? And I just kept going and going and going until my attitude was better. And I did not allow myself to leave the lounge until I was feeling better about starting my day. That is the difference between being intentional about the way you are thinking and showing up in the world and arriving to your sacred studio space, whether that be a coffee table or a big ass factory, it makes no difference. This is where, right at the start, I said, I want to speak to each of you individually. It does not matter at what phase of your career you are in. If you show up in the world with all of that noise from everything going on around us, all of those cycles that we keep recycling in our head, if you show up carrying all of that and you are not intentional about your thinking, you will not go anywhere. So that's what I'm forever saying to clients. You know, at the end of the day, you can teach skills, you can teach values, you can teach goals, you can teach how to structure a business. Hell, I can even teach people how to structure bank accounts these days. I've even found a system. Don't get me wrong, I am not a financial person. Don't ever ask me to be a financial person. But in the grand scheme of helping people operate a creative business, that backbone there, that black and white stuff is easy. What is not easy is people. What is not easy is the you. This is where 90% of what I do with coaching clients is all about their internal patterning. It is all about the energy that they arrive with. Yes, inevitably we sit down, we look at the work, we talk about creative voice, we talk about how to, you know, make the work stronger and all of that. But can I be really honest with you? I have seen it over and over and over again. Those artists that have harmonious passion, that are willing to just persevere and show up for the work and show up for the work and show up with the right attitude, the attitude that says, every single work I make is another brick in this wall that is my creative life. So if one work fails, if one exhibition fails, if the work doesn't sell and it gets sent back, I do exactly what I used to do with those tiny little gymnasts when they used to fall on their heads. We used to pick them up, we used to brush them off, and we used to give them a high five, and we used to say, Well done, you are right on track. Let's fail again, let's keep going, let's keep developing that grit. Sometimes it worries me that there are so many adults walking around the face of this planet that I don't know whether they've had this perfect life where nothing has like I don't know, I don't know. Maybe none of us have failed enough. Or equally, I think sometimes we need a big win to know what a win feels like, and then you've got something to kind of strive for again. It's a really interesting thing that I sit with and I think about, honestly, because I think about, you know, the gymnasts with their goals and whatnot. They'd inevitably get the good score or get the gold medal. They'd get a quote unquote win. Then they'd know what that felt like, and then they'd be hungry for something more. Or they'd hit a new skill, one that was really, really hard, one that they failed at over and over and over and over again. And I can still remember, it still gives me absolute goosebumps. We used to make the biggest deal over these like incredibly difficult skills these kids were doing. I still remember so many of these kids' faces, like clear as day, the moment that they stuck a landing for the first time on something that they hadn't landed, something that they'd fallen a million times at, and they finally landed it. I get goosebumps today thinking about that. And sometimes I think maybe maybe some of us haven't had that. Maybe some of us haven't felt that thing that has hurt so much in the lead up to, and then we finally got it. So maybe that's why some people aren't hungry enough. I don't know. But grit is something that you can only develop through doing the hard work and putting yourself out there and continuing to show up anyway. And I don't know. I have just I don't know whether I've just lit a fire up underneath you or made some of you angry, but I just feel like this is something that has needed to come out. And so I just want to say to each and every one of you, if you feel like you're failing, if you feel like you're not moving fast enough, keep stepping up to the plate. If you've had a quote unquote big failure in your eyes, give yourself a high five. I'll give yourself I'll give you a high five right now. You are right on track, you are right on track. The more it hurts, the faster you need to get up, the faster you need to brush yourself off, the quicker you need to get back into your painting or drawing or whatever it is. Because do you know what would happen with those tiny little children if they fell and broke a bone and then they had their six weeks off or whatnot? Do you know what we used to do? We used to make them come into the gym. We used to make them do as much as humanly possible on the opposite arm. Safely, obviously. But we used to keep them in the momentum. We used to keep them moving. Why? If you stop, fear creeps in. I heard people say to me all the time, Karin, you're like such a shark. It's like if you're not moving, you're dying. It's true. I don't want to stop. Every time I hit a goal, I'm like, give me another mountain. Give me another goalpost to strive towards. I don't want to let fear creep in. Because believe me, if I was to hit a goal and then stop and not turn up to the studio, like granted, yes, I know, I know, I know, I have to give myself more time off every now and then. But the reason I don't is because when you stop, fear creeps in. It allows space for you to question the things you are doing. And if you are in your head, if you are questioning, and if you are not working, you are not moving forward. It is unproductive to sit and whinge about the things that have not worked. Sure. Reflect on them. But use them. Use them to grow you. So I don't know. I don't know. I feel like um yeah, I just wanted to give everyone permission to keep moving, even when it feels slow, even when an exhibition didn't work out as planned. I wanted to give you all permission that if you are failing, you are right on track. And if you are not failing, you need to do something to fail. You know, purposefully put yourself in a position, paint a work that has never been painted before in a completely different way. Whatever you can do to push yourself out of your comfort zone more and more and more, that is the only way that our brick wall of our creative life is going to get taller and taller and taller. Imagine. What if what if all of those dreams and all of those desires that you have for your creative life? What if they're just one failure away? What if the next failure was you sticking that landing that those gymnasts used to stick? Anyway, I'm gonna stop babbling on now. I feel like I've got my point across. Um Yeah. I feel like I need to do another episode to just fill you all in on all the exciting things happening in my neck of the woods, but this podcast has become a lot less about me and my world, and a lot more about how I can serve you guys. And I'm liking that. But I will. I will fill you all in because there are some really big things in the works, and um, I too am having to grow my capacity for my own personal creative power, and I too am continuing to step up to the plate and move those goalposts, and I too am making mistakes and having to make some really hard decisions at the moment. So I am right there with you, and um I don't yeah, I know I don't ever promote like a lot of my coaching stuff. That's purely just because I don't have the capacity to take on a lot of clients. However, um if you are needing someone to do this more regularly, light a fire up your ass and get you moving. I'm not a subtle coach. I will tell you how it is. And um, yeah, I'm I'm a no-fluff kind of person. So if you need that kind of energy in your creative life, maybe I'm your girl. Um, but more than that, I'm just grateful that you're all here listening. And keep listening, keep sharing the podcast, and yeah, if you want to know more about my coaching side of things, I will put the link in the show notes for you. But I do have I don't know if there's still awaiting this. I will have to check. But feel free to get in touch if you are interested. And um, yeah, onward and upward everyone. Go and smash some girls. Humming yes. We're great. Have a good one, guys.