ISSUE ONE: SENSORY CONSCIOUSNESS
In the seven years I’ve been advising creatives, I’ve noticed themes. Burnout, emotional overwhelm, shame related to how capitalism (and our culture) measures success. I haven’t been able to put my finger on why all this is so pervasive, but… it is. Fucking fish don’t know water’s wet, right? Coming out of COVID, I knew something needed to change in terms of how to operate a sustainable small biz. For me too! Opening the studio and salon drove home how deprived and disconnected I’ve felt. Over the last 8 months of working IRL, I’ve begun to reconnect more deeply with other parts of myself—my senses, mostly, or really my body: sight, sound, taste, touch, scent, and proprioception (where the body is in relation to space.)
I’ve realized how dangerous a one-dimensional, purely capitalistic view of success is to my professional and personal health. I felt deprived, during the pandemic, but it’s more than that. We’ve all been conditioned to divorce ourselves from a full sensory experience, to measure everything quantitatively, only by the numbers and, ultimately, to view success purely in terms of dollars - or growth. Sustainability (HOWEVER you take that word, believe me, I mean all of it) is emotional and physical health, time with friends or family, time to create shit that’s true to ourselves. Instead, we’re all ALL business. We believe we have to disconnect from a holistic sensory experience so… what? So we can succeed, creating what a capitalist culture sees as valuable—financially. And ahem, that’s bullshit, let alone not even remotely connected to full spectrum thriving.
I’m not making this shit up. McNamara’s Fallacy is the idea that only what can be measured statistically matters. ONLY.. Anything that can’t be measured? Safe to ignore. And for a long time—most of my life, anyway—when something, anything, “succeeds” quantitatively, that has been success. Full stop, damn the torpedoes or collateral damage or the poisoned river. (side bar - my MBA thesis actually tried to defend intuition and qualitative nuance in the face os metrics). And this is a bananas-ass way to operate. No wonder entrepreneurs experience burnout (34%), suffer with anxiety (50.2%) and other mental health issues (87.7%). It’s not to say it’s just us—the numbers for everybody else in those categories aren’t pretty either—but it’s worse, for us.
So what’s that solution?
I believe the answer lies at least partly in a concept I’ve been exploring lately: sensory consciousness. It’s awareness of the visual, tactile, olfactory, auditory, and taste qualities of stimuli, or “whatever’s going on.”. It’s not something that happens to us—it’s what living really feels like. We need to practice using all our senses again, for all kinds of reasons. Especially decision making. We know it when we feel it, but creating it, intentionally? To sell to other people? Not easy. To organically know what matters to us, what we want to do and how to do it—that’s what we need to get back in touch with, now. That’s an activated, embodied way of operating and I am HERE for that, especially because I believe creative entrepreneurship helps steward in societal change, sometimes even progress.
All of us, in our businesses, need all our senses operating. It’s what people mean when they talk about “being present” (barf.) BUT still, this is how we do it, radically, sustainably. It’s what’s life-giving about what we all do. We can’t just look at money or status (sigh) as the only goals—and NOT because those things aren’t attainable or sustainable for creatives. They fucking are. But when we use all of our senses, we reach our goals and aspirations without the shame, the imposter syndrome, and the treadmill effect so many of us struggle with. This is how we do it WITHOUT turning into the (successful) shitheads we hate.
(As I’m writing this, I’m reminded of my HOLISTIC SUSTAINABILITY FRAMEWORK I developed as a lil’ baby strategic advisor. My philosophy on business is there and I’d encourage you to take a look.)
THIS HAS GOTTEN MIGHTY LONG, so thanks for hanging with me. Let’s wrap up with two questions I always ask my clients, starting out:
How do you want a day, week, weekend, month and vacation to look like, 3 years from now?
With a grounded and pragmatic hat on (no fantasy bullshit, please), what is the minimum salary you’d like—you need, maybe—to make to maintain your lifestyle, your profession, and your creative freedom?
From there, we dive into core values exercises to ground a solid foundation. From that, we can build a holistically sustainable business plan. This ensures a sensory-rich, inherently sustainable mode of operating that lets us get what we want AND BE A HAPPY HEALTHY HUMAN. That’s what we need to be measuring.
I think we need to get back into the groove of fully-felt, sense-led direction, goal setting, and success measuring. This inherently implies consciously using all the senses. It’s also how we outcompete AI, for anyone out there worried about that. I’m committed to this in my own practice, in the work I do every day with clients, and now at salon meetings, and as a studio hosting artists and events. It’s what I’ve been about from the beginning, but shit’s getting MUCH clearer now, and I’m dead-set this is where the future lies for Weird Specialty. Will you join me?
#getwithit
gJ
