This is Hard — Why Your Creative Dream Requires Your Best Effort

This is hard. This is difficult. This is challenging. This sucks.

If your creative dream isn’t hard, it’s probably not worth pursuing. If it isn’t difficult, how will you be forced to excel at your craft? If it isn’t challenging, why are you doing something so easy?

Easy is not inspiring.

How are you and I usually inspired? I can’t speak for you, but I am inspired by people who overcome great challenges to do great things.

Name any human endeavor — athletics, academics, science, exploration, human rights, politics, medicine —we are inspired by people who overcame impossible odds to achieve great things.

John F. Kennedy once said in his famous speech, “We choose to go to the moon and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone…”

Kennedy’s vision to reach the moon before the end of the Sixties catalyzed the best efforts of everyone involved in the Apollo mission.

As a five-year-old, I’ll never forget my dad waking me one morning in July 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong take his awe-inspiring moon steps.

Hard is the very thing that draws out the best in us.

Your dream isn’t meant to be easy. 

If your dream is easy, it’s not worthy of your best energy and effort.

Yes, I'm speaking to myself.

I hope this helps you in some good way, too.

Question: What do you find most difficult about pursuing your creative dream? What helps you overcome your creative challenges?

*Stay tuned for Joey's upcoming book: Cultivating Your Creative Dream

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