030: Future-Shaped Decisions

This episode is originally being released on July 3, 2023, meaning that as I’m recording this, it’s the midpoint of the calendar year. Recently, on The Half Marathoner substack (which is an awesome newsletter if you’re a runner, like me), Terrell Johnson wrote, "This time of the year … has always felt like second base to me. As if you’re on a baseball diamond, running the bases, and you’re about to touch second; you’re at the farthest point from where you started — home — but you’re also half way to getting back there again." What a powerful image. You’re halfway through the journey that’s called 2023. We’re as far as we can get from the holiday season that always marks the delineation between calendar years, but we’re also halfway to getting back there.

This time of year is when business owners and leaders the world over are reviewing their plans for 2023, determining how things have been going so far, and making any needed changes. They’re taking time to figure out how they want to run the other two “bases” that are left in 2023.

What about you? Are you going to take some time over the next week or so to look back over the past six months and make plans for the coming six months? A lot of the creative entrepreneurs I work with struggle with the planning part of being an entrepreneur. So today I’m going to give you an exercise I think will help you wrap your brain around doing that deep planning work that’s necessary to allow your business to thrive. We’re going to talk about how to use your regret and your imagination to make future-shaped decisions.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why strategic planning within your creative business is worthwhile.
• How your past regrets can be an important motivator in the present.
• How you can use your imagination to ensure that you’re making the best decisions you can.
• What role your aversion to regret can play to help you overcome your fear of change.
• How to make decisions about your creative work that you will be proud of for years to come.

In this episode, I share three pieces of exciting news in the Starving Artist No More community:

• Dream Big Workshop - This is a completely free, no-strings-attached 2-hour workshop on goal setting for creative entrepreneurs. July 5, 2023, from 7-9pm ET. 
• Taming the Muse Group Workshop - Registration is now open for the summer cohort of my group workshop. The workshop begins on July 19, 2023 and will meet weekly through the end of September. 
• Muse Scholarship - The Muse Scholarship will be granted to two creative entrepreneurs and will cover 75% of the registration cost for the Summer 2023 cohort of the Taming the Muse Group Workshop. Scholarship applications are due 11:59pm ET on Sunday, July 9, 2023.

I quote briefly from a recent edition of The Half Marathoner newsletter by Terrell Johnson, and I mention the book "The Power of Regret" by Daniel Pink. I also reference previous episodes of this podcast: 

• 017: What You Can Control
• 018: Purpose and Flexibility (Goal Setting for Creatives, Part 1 of 2)
• 019: SMART Creativity (Goal Setting for Creatives, Part 2 of 2)
  
• 025: Make Your Own Luck

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. Full transcripts of every episode will always be available at the Starving Artist No More Blog.

Thank you for listening. Please feel free to reach out to me at www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, with any questions, comments, or feedback. I'd love to hear from you.