If I Could Give You Any Advice on Your Craft and Calling, It Would Be This

Matthew Gottesman (0:02)

Welcome to The Niche Is You. My name is Matt Gottesman, at Matt Gottesman on Instagram, and this is my daily podcast where I create short, quick hitting episodes to help you uncomplicate life, creativity, and the pursuit of your highest self. There's only main character energy here. Now let's get into it.

Welcome to episode 886 If I could give you any advice on craft and calling, it would be this episode. If I could give you any advice on your craft and calling, it would be this. Nine things I've learned about your mastery, consistency, curiosity, experience, and staying with the work. Very specifically, the reason why I'm doing this episode is because on my stories earlier, well, by the time you listen to this episode, it will have been last week. But on my stories, I wrote, if I could give you any advice on your craft and calling, it would be this. And I put nine points that I was just flowing. I was in the car, I was coming out of the studio, doing some filming with Nick, my video editor and producer. And we had such a great conversation about being in the work and how there's just certain things you cannot avoid. But also that experience from being in the work is also what separates you from a loud world. It's what helps you dive deeper into craft and focus. It's what helps you understand a little bit more about maybe what you're even here to do. And it was because one of the points that we were talking about is that you have to have faith in what you're creating without having the whole story yet. And that's not always easy because, well, I mean, let's be honest, because a lot of society will tell you, you need to take the sure bet. If you do this path, whatever that path might be, you're gonna be happy and you're gonna make a certain amount of money, and that's predictable. But not only are many of us carving our own path, many more than any other time, I think, in history have kind of jumped ship from listening to the traditional path, only because they're seeing more and more generationally whether or not people feel convicted in the work and feel happy. You know, they're like, well, I don't want to just chase the money and then not be happy. I would like to ideally, you know, integrate both. Like, we're allowed to use our gifts for, you know, the way we want to use them and make a really exceptional living off of that, right? So, I get asked about this all the time. I was, you know, we had such a great conversation in the studio. Those videos are coming out soon. And I went on a tear, and here's what I wrote on my stories. Said, if I could give you any advice on your craft and calling, it would be this. And here's nine bullet points. And then we're going to dive into each of these, all right? Is one, put in the reps. Two, stay consistent long enough to find your rhythm. Three, study your craft because you genuinely want to understand it. Four, pay attention to other creators across disciplines who inspire you without abandoning your own instincts. That's a big one. We're going to talk about all these. Five, get more interested in mastery than recognition. Like, let me just tell you something right now.

You will be recognized for your work when you are in the mastery of it, when you are devoted to the craft of it, when you are wanting to get into the details, and your work is put out there over and over and over again because you are, you're essentially growing yourself through the work, and you are growing your craft through the work, and the visibility is a byproduct. And people will just naturally see more of it. But when you start off in the place of like, I want recognition, you put an unnecessary pressure on the work before it's even ever developed itself. Right?

Six, let curiosity keep expanding your work. Seven, learn what only experience can teach you. Eight, stay devoted when nobody is watching. And nine, give it enough time to become unmistakably yours. You know, I've always been long devoted to the long game. And I believe me, I get it's hard sometimes because this world is so there's the visible world. There's the visibility of our work, which is great. But then there's the visible world that is constantly bombarding you with visuals of how something should look. And we don't always know how much time it's taking or what's really going on behind the scenes, et cetera, et cetera. And that's why, like, the work has also saved me, to be perfectly honest with you. Like, there were so many times where I would, like, look up. I'd see all kinds of different, you know, things. I'd even see ideas that I had had years ago, like, with people doing them and just crushing them. I was like, that's great. But then I would just be like, you know, just get back in the work, Matty. Like, just get back in the work, get back in the work.