Artist mindseT EXPLAINED:

Artist mindset is a way of thinking that helps you make brave choices as you face your creative fears.

If you’re a performing artist who has experienced feeling small in auditions, classes, rehearsals, or performances due to fear of failure or being seen, you’re perfectly human.

When you are about to be creative, you’re about to do something you’ve never done before. Which means you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. From your brain’s standpoint, it feels like you might expose yourself to danger. And because there’s a part of your brain dedicated to keeping you alive (and will do anything to keep you away from potential danger) when you’re close to being truly creative, you might find yourself actually going into a survival mode.

To practice artist mindset is to build awareness of our fears so that we can learn to rise above our survival instincts. By facing towards the fear, we make brave choices.

Honing our artist mindset deals with our thoughts and feelings—something intangible we can’t see directly with our own eyes. Our brain is full of connections made from our past experiences. Through staying curious and asking questions, we investigate how we respond to our fears and practice new ways of going through the resistance. Photography is a direct, visual tool we can use to help us see ourselves better. In this journey, I will use my eyes and my experience with still and moving images to help you grow, expand, and level up as an artist.

Our ultimate goal in this journey is to figure out how you can embrace your creative fears and show up with courage in creative spaces consistently.

The fear will never go away in our artist’s journey if we’re doing things right. It will always be there as long as we continue to grow and challenge ourselves.

If you’re curious, there are many different ways you can engage with this work! You can start off with Introduction to Artist Mindset group class and get a little taste of what it’s like to be brave with others. You can also start out by booking a 1:1 practice session with me, or signing up for 4-week Artist Mindset Foundation.. If you’re in need of materials to represent yourself online, you can also choose to do a hybrid session with James Jin Images! If you’re having a hard time deciding what’s right for you, please contact me and I’d be happy to set up a consultation to get you started in this journey.