If you’ve read our first and second installments of our 3-Part Series for Artists, then you’ve met two of the three monsters that are killing the souls of artists today.

The first was Irony…the speech you tell yourself that says:

“I am such a meaningless loser. Everything in life is a meaningless joke. If I don’t laugh about it, I’ll blow my brains out. I hate myself.”

The second was the Spirit of the Times…today’s intellectual “law” that says:

“We can’t really be sure we know anything. Therefore, being ignorant is being smart. Ignorance is Intelligence.”

Ready to meet the third and final monster…the scariest, deadliest monster of them all?

It’s called “The Curse of Genius.”

The Hydra’s 3rd Head

“I’ve got to do something original. I’ve got to do something original, I can’t copy anything that’s been done…”

Have you ever told this to yourself? Chances are you get an idea, get excited, but when you try to develop it, this track starts to play on repeat.

This track that was meant to make you original instead makes your head start spinning and your stomach bottom out as your lungs tighten and you give up on your great idea.

If there’s one thing that kills your creativity, it’s the idea of “Genius”…that unless your idea is 100% original and has nothing to do with anything that came before, you’re a sellout, a hack, a failure who can never make it big time.

But the truth is, that’s a load of bull.

Why?

Because human beings operate in recognizable patterns, nothing is 100% original.

There’s only a finite number of ways that people act…and if somebody made a piece of art that has touched your life, it is because they have tapped into that pattern that you are living…because they have lived that pattern themselves.

We artists sold ourselves a bill of goods on “Genius.” We sold ourselves this bill of goods to pump ourselves up, to make ourselves feel special, unique.

But the bottom line is that it isolates ourselves from the humanity around us and the humanity in ourselves.

It makes us ignorant, because it makes us think that patterns of human behavior don’t apply to us, that we are somehow superhuman, more powerful than the average joe or jane, able to rain down thunder from our tongues and lightning from our fingertips.

But the truth is, the “Genius” bill of goods makes us feel like subhumans…losers who can never create anything without becoming a sellout, a hack, a failure.

Didn’t we get into art to escape those feelings in the first place?

The truth is, if you want to make a work of art that inspired someone in the way a work of art once inspired you, you’ve got to throw the “Genius” bum out on the street…and embrace the eternal patterns that make us all human beings.

The Bottom Line

Now you’ve met all three monsters killing artists’ souls today.

We use Irony to destroy ourselves…

We use the Spirit of the Times to blind ourselves…

And we use the Curse of Genius to delude ourselves…

All as we enslave ourselves in the chains of Self-Hate, Ignorance, and Impotence.

Are you ready to kill these three monsters…and kill them dead?

If you are, then stick around, because we’ve got a new three part series coming out about how you can kill these three monsters and create free, liberating art that will give you the power to express what you have always dreamed.