Are You Setting Art Goals or Basking in Perfectionist Fantasies?

It is a few weeks out from the new year, a time when I like to set new art goals and I know a lot of you like to make this time of year about setting art goals. I am in the process of teaching a workshop on setting ACHIEVABLE art goals inside the Membership. In my research I remembered that I wrote this LONG essay on the creative process of setting big audacious art goals and the pitfall that they sometimes turn into perfectionist fantasies.

At the time when I wrote this essay, I was also reading a biography on Vincent Van Gogh, and I kept seeing how he was guilty of creating perfectionist fantasies, and these never turn out well. His life was full of frenetic creativity and times of self-sabatoge.

I like to think that we can create to our potential without having to fall into times of woe and self-criticism.

In reading the biography on Vincent van Gogh, I came to the realization that he was a tortured soul, and is a classic example of a person overridden with a mindset that is driven by perfectionist fantasies and tomorrow thinking. 

A perfectionist fantasy is a fantasy about if you can achieve a level of perfection in one area of your life (say, a big audacious goal) then you can finally be proud of yourself and be happy with yourself and life. 

This perfectionist fantasy is often made up of elaborate plans to achieve the big audacious goal, and you either never start to implement the plans or you begin but the moment you experience a setback, you give up.

Perfectionist fantasies, lead to tomorrow thinking, and tomorrow thinking is when tell yourself that you will begin to implement this elaborate plan (perfectionist fantasy) tomorrow or next week.(and let’s face it, the plan is impossible to achieve)

A perfectionist mindset says, “I will start tomorrow, so I can start freshly and perfectly.“

Tomorrow, thinking is the idea that we will start tomorrow, so, when we start, we start out perfectly. Whatever it is, a new drawing habit, a new painting, a new exercise routine, the very definition of a perfectionist fantasy is that it is a fantasy. It’s not based on our humanity, and the reality of today. 

Where tomorrow in our mind is a fantasy, the fantasy that somehow in our mind we will be a different person. A person no longer buffeted by the various commitments, thoughts, and routines of our daily life, and tomorrow we will perfectly navigate our life and miraculously achieve a perfect day, where all of our elaborate plans get executed and completed.

In the fantasy of tomorrow, you are finally doing everything you quote“ “should“ be doing.

You are finally perfect, even if you do not use that word for it. And this vision is so seductive, because you have this unrealistic fantasy of what you can achieve tomorrow. You usually fail almost before you start, or immediately as soon as you encounter a day where something goes awry. You give up and stop.

Or even worse, you never even start because you were caught in a cycle of tomorrow thinking and you keep putting off your goals and dreams , waiting for that perfect morning when you wake up and everything aligns. Tomorrow you will get to it, tomorrow you will start, tomorrow you will be perfect.

This cycle can be addictive, where you design the perfect creative project, you indulge in tomorrow thinking, and you experience the euphoric hit of dopamine, imagining what it will feel like embodying this creative dream and feel good about yourself.

Ironically, you create that feeling for yourself now with your thoughts, and that tomorrow is not now, and is likely not to happen, but imagining this perfect future, you allow yourself to think about and feel good about yourself. And this feels good now.

And then you start your elaborate plan and you encounter a hiccup that fails to follow your plan perfectly or you don’t even start because you don’t want to risk failing. So then you start criticizing yourself and you start feeling bad about yourself. And your solution out of this is to create another elaborate creative project and get another hit of dopamine, imagining how you will feel tomorrow.

Tomorrow thinking leads to not doing anything or trying a little, failing, and giving up. 

Often the reaction to your first failed elaborate plan, is to recreate another elaborate goal and plan so that you can feel better in the present with another hit of dopamine and engage in more tomorrow thinking.

Tomorrow thinking is a sign that you are not willing to be present with and love the reality of your today.

It turns into a cycle that can last four weeks, years, or in some cases, like with Vincent van Gogh, his entire adult life is riddled with audacious life and career goals, eleborate and often stringent plans that did not allow for any deviation from the outlined steps.  

This cycle of perfectionist fantasies, and tomorrow thinking can become a way of life where you continue to seek the dopamine hits of feeling better by outlining and dreaming of these “castles in the skies“.

When you indulge in tomorrow thinking you start to feel good about how you will feel in the future. 

You do a little in the present, but when you fail to meet the rigor of the perfection of your dream project. Then, you feel bad about yourself, “I will never create my great body of work“ or in Van Gogh‘s life “I will never reach commercial success and sell my art“. You indulge in a new set of art goals that follow along the lines of previous perfectionist fantasies and tomorrow, thinking.

If you ever read Vincent Van Gogh’s biography, you read in almost every chapter of his life, how he would create extremely elaborate and rigorous plans to accomplish some career goal to satisfy himself and what he believed his parents wanted from him. Inevitably, he would fail and fall into a cycle of destructive habits and self punishing actions. For example, like sleeping in a cold unheated shed with only a sweater to warm his body in the winter while he was studying to be a cleric.  Or cutting off his ear when he fought with his roommate, fellow artist Gauguin, because they were not in perfect agreement about art and how to create it.  

This cycle of perfectionist fantasies and tomorrow thinking creates so many unfortunate consequences. 

First it compromises your integrity with yourself. Your planning and goal setting becomes an exercise in fantasy. You begin to know that when you make a plan, you probably won’t keep it. And with any drug (dopamine here) the high goes down, so eventually, you don’t even get the relief you want because you are already forecasting that you won’t complete this next art project. So you begin to anticipate the disappointment with yourself because you know deep down you will not see this creative project to completion.

Second, you make it impossible to get things done because you do not develop realistic plans and goals you can achieve. You have become so addicted to these “castles in the sky“ that you are unwilling to accept the reality of what you can actually accomplish.

It is easier to keep pretending, that there is some tomorrow, where you will not have to be have the human experience, and you won’t experience the pitfalls and challenges of your daily life.

You would rather plan a consecutive “hundred day project“ and get a dopamine hit the night before you start by imagining all the wonderful feelings you will feel about yourself tomorrow, then plan a creative art project that can truly and effectively be incorporated into your already busy life.

It is more fun imagining how you will feel when you magically have 100 beautiful and fantastic paintings stacked up in and around your house then imagining how you will no longer have negative emotions about your art and creative practice, because somehow, once you complete this hundred day project, you will always be proud of yourself and the work you create,

You would rather do this, rather than deal with your own reality.

Here’s why you fall into this trap, it’s because you withhold positive feedback from yourself now in your present life.  Even if you don’t mean for this to happen, you do not support yourself and feel good about what you are creating unless you achieve it through the perfection of these grandiose goals and plans. 

You have habitualized yourself to not feel good about yourself and your accomplishments, unless you achieve this perfected state.

How do you stop the cycle? 

The solution to break out of this cycle is to choose to begin setting a minimum baseline of effort to define and create your art goals. Instead, you believe it’s better to just continue dreaming about the day things go perfect like in your futuristic fantasies.

So you keep making unrealistic plans and indulging in tomorrow thinking, it’s the only time you allow yourself positive emotions of yourself.

You don’t want to create realistic plans that fit within your current reality because you tell yourself that you are not good enough now as you are in the current present.

You don’t want to be present with that person. You want the artificial high of tomorrow thinking, rather than developing the ability to be proud of yourself, and to take pride in your actual current reality and the potential of real accomplishments.

Vincent van Gogh would often write to his brother, Theo, outlining large and grandiose painting plans that would include collaborating with fellow artists, and then culminate in a group exhibition that would lead to accolades and commercial success as an artist. However, the moment, he received any negative feedback from a fellow artist, or could not reserve a specific venue, Vincent would throw out his plans, and sometimes even destroy paintings.

So let’s look at a common creative project, a hundred day project, and see how this relates to perfectionist fantasies and tomorrow thinking.

If you have gotten used to fantasizing on completing a hundred day art project, you will not think making a creative commitment to creating one painting a week is exciting enough.

Instead you make unrealistic plans you will know never follow and now you don’t have any creative habit.

Perfectionist fantasies may feel good in the moment, but the result and indulging in them is that you lose integrity with yourself and your planning and goal setting is no longer related to your present reality and you feel like you let yourself down and you have no follow-through.

In addition, you are never accepting and present enough with yourself to truly love and accept what you have accomplished right now.

Impossible Goals and Living from Your Future Self

Are you familiar with the concept of impossible goals or the idea that 10X is better than 2X? And you might wonder where do these big audacious goals fit into your life and can you set them without these goals becoming futuristic fantasies.

Yes, you can do this.  You can plan out a big audacious art goal and practice living from your future self without slipping into a perfectionist fantasy and tomorrow thinking.

Living from your future self is about learning to think thoughts that you currently don’t believe so that you can achieve different results that were once impossible to you, but now is part of your new identity. One you have crafted by living from your future self.

If you want to dream big and set ambitious creative goals, you have to plan out how you will get there and have the practice of believing in the person you are becoming.

You have to practice believing that you can do things you haven’t done before and become the person you have not become yet.

And there is a risk that sometimes you can turn your big audacious creative goals into perfectionist fantasies with tomorrow thinking

There are a couple ways to tell the difference between big audacious goals and perfectionis, fantasies, and knowing how to identify between the two is very important.

So when you are first embarking on an audacious goal (I like to think of this audacious creative goal as something that stretches you in all areas of your artistic expression, skill mastery, size and expression) it is likely to inspire two contradictory emotions, excitement and nausea. 

You feel these two emotions simultaneously because the thought of everything to make this creative goal happen is exciting, but also scary.  

You don’t quite have it in you to achieve the goal right now. You have to grow into the artist who has these abilities as you are working through to achieving the big audacious goal.

When you are indulging in a perfectionist fantasy and tomorrow thinking, you will feel a different mix of emotions. You will feel good in that you will feel relief from any negative self talk and get a hit of dopamine from pretending you will be perfect in the future.

So if you were thinking about your next big art goal, and all you feel is good, this is actually a sign that it is probably a perfectionist fantasy.

If you are truly trying to achieve this audacious art goal, you are going to feel a gamut of emotions such as, fear, concern, doubt, and anxiety.

This happens to me every time I am starting a big new art project. I have come to expect it, and I also begin to second-guess my plans if all I am thinking and feeling is joy and euphoria. This is my internal signal that I have set too big and too strict parameters on my goal.  I know my plans are falling into a perfectionist fantasy.

Sometimes with a perfectionist fantasy there will be some negative emotions, because you are already anticipating failure, but the negative emotions associated with perfectionist fantasies typically are not the fear and anxiety of not knowing how to achieve the goal. 

Because if you are truly committed to doing going after your goal, and you are truly seeking ways to achieve it. The feeling of fear you feel comes from knowing that you are actually going to try just about everything in your artistic toolbox and some of your actions will fail. And the fear of failure is real.

Another distinction between your audacious art goal, and a perfectionist fantasy is that you may not know how to get all the way to the goal, but you can see the next couple steps.

You may not know how to create a full body of work, organize and schedule a solo exhibition, but you do know what to do to start a painting or research venues. You are able to plan the next three steps at a time, and you are ready and willing, even if you feel scared to take those next three steps. 

When you are indulging in a perfectionist fantasy, you are likely spending most of your mental time thinking about the outcome. You are thinking about that ultimate magic moment of being in your studio surrounded by all your completed paintings. You are not looking at the small, incremental steps that will take you to achieve that goal.

You just want to enjoy imagining this magical land where everything is perfect.

When you are feeling this way and indulging in an imagined future of a perfectionist fantasy, what results is that you create an outline of a perfect plan that requires you to implement it perfectly.

Following it 100% of the time, which is not realistic or probable.

The best plans are that are malleable and flexible.

Going after an audacious art goal requires you to practice belief in your ability to persevere every step of the way.

Using the example of creating a body of work for an exhibition, ask yourself, do you think you can create the 30 paintings a gallery requires for a solo exhibition? If the answer is yes, then ask yourself if you think you can complete 2 to 3 paintings a month for 12 months straight. If the answer is no way. Then you are not living in the belief of possibility. Instead, you are indulging in a perfectionist fantasy.
When you are indulging in a perfectionist fantasy, you think you believe, but when you begin to break down the goal into process oriented steps, you don’t believe in the ability of accomplishing those steps.

You think you believe, but you don’t.

When you say you believe in your ability to achieve your art goal, what do you mean is that you intellectually agree that it is conceivably possible for a person like you to accomplish such a goal. This is so subtle. It is a concept I have been grappling with the whole time I have been an artist. Even before when I was switching from being an architect to artist. Every new art goal I set, I still have to identify the nuances between what is a truly doable audacious art goal, and what is a perfectionist fantasy.

Often times when I’m indulging in a perfectionist fantasy, I am doing so to feel better about a recent setback, and I am not wanting to sit in the feelings of disappointment.  Nor am I learning from them, because I am uncomfortable about what I am likely going to learn about myself and about my art.

As artist, you are constantly encouraged to learn new things and with this you also need to learn how to believe new things about yourself.

With a perfectionist fantasy, you claim to totally believe it, but you don’t believe it at all.

When you are working towards a true audacious art goal that you are actually invested in, you are actually working on believing. You are grappling with your belief and it should feel hard and challenging and kind of hurt your brain.

Perfectionist fantasies are all black and white thinking. You either believe it all or not at all. You are creating an imaginary plan and you indulge in the thoughts that a perfect imaginary future will make it easy to carry out the plan in a perfect imaginary world.

Big audacious art goals mean living with the gray area of life. Working through the beliefs that are new to you and struggling and searching out the next few steps that will move you forward. Going after your big audacious art goal means that you will be willing to be in the struggle for as long as it takes to get you to your goal.

Here is the biggest distinction between perfectionist fantasies, and a big audacious art goal, if you are committed to the big audacious art goal, you are ready and willing to fail and you know that it is through repeated failures that you will get to the goal.

You are ready to fail forward.

You know it is going to happen, and you are willing to not stop trying.

There is no getting off track or going down the wrong road, you just keep trying and experimenting until you complete the process. 

If you are indulging in a perfectionist fantasy, you are either giving up before you begin, or you start and encounter your first failure/pitfall, and then stop. You think failure is the problem. 

I’m all in for your big audacious art goals, but not with perfectionist fantasies. And if you have the habit of always using perfectionist fantasies to soothe your soul, the reality is you are not ready to embark on a big audacious art goal. 

This is because you have not built a reliable relationship with yourself where you do the stuff you say you are going to do.

Your relationship with your plans is something like this: you might do the plan if the stars align AND you don’t feel any internal resistance, but if you feel any resistance, or think of something else will be more “fun” and more “exciting” than what you have planned, you will not follow through on your plan.

If this is your reality, it is not because you are a bad artist, or a bad person, it just means that you have undermined your relationship with yourself. 

If you are more prone to perfectionist fantasies, then an audacious art goal is likely to shift into a variation of a perfectionist fantasy and I encourage you to modify your big audacious art goal into something that is smaller in scope and may not feel as fun and as exciting when you think about it, however, it rebuilds the relationship you have with yourself and your ability to make a plan and follow through on it.

And this is where setting a consistent minimum baseline goal would probably be your next audacious art goal. It is actually something you have never done before and don’t know how to consistently show up and stick to the small plans that you set for yourself. 

Set a small minimum-baseline goal, and begin to work towards it. This can be anything, just make it small and something you think you can easily accomplish. Once you have reached the achievable goal, set another minimum baseline goal and accomplish that.

Now initially, the small minimum baseline goals will not feel as good and when you set the perfectionist fantasy goals.  You will think this goal is not big enough and you will feel the withdrawal from the dopamine hits of perfectionist fantasies. You will miss your tomorrow thinking and the euphoria they can bring to your mental state.

Give yourself time to get a accustomed to this new experience of going after a minimum baseline goal.

Practicing the minimum baseline, which means making small goals, and practicing sticking to them, requires you to be present in your own life and grapple with all the negative self talk that might come up. And to really embrace the idea of creating change with small incremental and consistent actions.

Make small goals and practice completing them.

Don’t create elaborate plans that require 5 to 6 hours of uninterrupted studio time if that is unrealistic. Knowing you will be behind by midday on Monday.

Instead, strategize one day at a time, and then plan out one hour at a time. The book The Slight Edge is a great resource for embracing this concept of a minimum-baseline.

Be prepared for your brain to tell you that this is not grand enough, that it is not worth the time, and it will take too long, and you won’t get where you want.

Listening to those thoughts is how you got to where you are now.

It’s time to start thinking something new, try something that will help you grow at a slow and steady pace. 

Stop making plans you know you will not keep.

Every time you create a futuristic fantasy, plans that you know you will not keep, you are already lying to yourself, and the thing is you know this deep down. It’s an artificial high, that has a shadow side that does not feel good.

Be willing to experience the discomfort of being present with your actual present and creative process.

It is likely you are very negative with your present life, saying your work is not good enough, and then, indulging in this fantasy that you will finally be good enough when you are perfect in your artistic expression.

This practice of creating a minimum baseline art project that you can actually stick to is everything. Your brain will say it’s not enough, but it’s everything!

It is how you learn to build reliability and integrity with yourself.

It is how you learn to stay present in your real reality, it is how you learn to deal with the negative self talk and to change your script.

If you are always escaping to a perfectionist fantasy, you will never learn how to live in your present and then implement incremental improvement to re-orientate your life and art practice.

If you are always escaping into a perfectionist fantasy, you are never learning how to love yourself now.

The irony is that learning to do this is going to allow you to become the artist you want to be.

You will need to work on it one step at a time.

If you will have goals for yourself that you are not achieving, I can almost guarantee this is why, perfectionist fantasies and tomorrow thinking.