Is achieving success at the highest levels all it's cracked up to be?

+ 🏝️ You're Invited! How to Free Time for Creative Projects — Join us tomorrow

Hi Friends,

There has been much emphasis in The Discourse™️ these last few years about nepo babies—do they deserve to be celebrated for their talent and/or success? Or were they simply born with their foot in the door, as twenty-five-year-old Maya Hawke sings on her new album Chaos Angel, the child of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman?

Maya can’t seem to escape an interview without the host asking about her parents, and what it’s like to come from such celebrated celebrity stock.

On the near-constant rejection inherent to creative careers: “I got to watch two of the most successful actors of their time have many, many moments of thinking that they would never work again,” she said in a recent conversation with Sam Fragoso on his Talk Easy podcast.

But there was something else she said that stopped me in my tracks . . .

More on that in a moment, but first a friendly reminder to join us tomorrow!

🏝️ Virtual Workshop: How to Free Time for Creative Projects

This workshop is coming up on Wednesday, June 5 at 12:30 p.m. ET with Pat Flynn’s All-Access Pass community: How to Free Time for Creative Projects.

Most work stress is a systems problem — and can be solved easier and faster than you think. Based on key operating principles from Free Time, you will learn how to stop letting important creative projects fall through the cracks.

Freeing time is a skill, and it is one you can get better at!

More about All-Access Pass: When you join AAP, you’re getting access to 18+ courses on everything you need to run a creative business (even if not full-time): podcasting, community building, affiliate sales, hosting webinars, email marketing, and so much more.

Are the highest echelons of creative success all they’re cracked up to be?

🎵 But I was born with my foot in the door
And my mind in the gutter and my guts on the floor

So your parents are famous: beautiful, talented, and accomplished. That doesn’t spare a teenager her suffering, or the young adult her existential searching.

One of Maya’s observations from her childhood, revealed around the ~30-minute mark, is one we can all carry with us. Instead of externalizing happiness to hypothetical moments of achievement far off in the future, remember that they may not be all they’re cracked up to be.

Here are my favorite excerpts from the conversation (emphasis mine):

“Due to the nature of the way that I grew up, I was able to see the unglamorous side of the glamorous side of working in the arts. And I was able to understand that if you go into this business and you would not be happy as an acting teacher, if you would not be happy working in regional theater, then this business will not make you happy because the parts that look fabulous do not make you happy. I don't really think that’s debatable.”

When host Sam Fragoso asks her to clarify what she means by that, she continues:

“The commodification of your spirit, like the obsession with beauty and youth, the constant rejection. I got to watch two of the most successful actors of their time have many, many moments of thinking that they would never work again. So if you think one moment of validation is going to last you, and without your feeling self-doubt or fear or rejection, you’re going to feel those things.”

And what is fun is making art with people. That is fun. So you want to make sure that your compass is pointing in the right direction and that you have a relationship to this work as craft, because commerce will sneak in. So you need to stay rooted in your craft to get through all that.”

Where might you be looking for validation that won’t last? How can you return to what’s fun about your craft, without overly attaching to the outcome?

Listen to the full Talk Easy interview here:

❤️ Until next time!