Season 2 – MC34: The New Normal with Jon Wilkening

What this episode covers

Jon Wilkening is a fellow Misfit, artist and photographer who I connected with a few years back via Twitter after my wife and I began experimenting with our first collaborative creative project. In Episode 34 of The Mindful Creator, Jon and I discuss redefining a new normal to achieve much-needed perspective on what success means to each of us individually. Link Love My New Normal Or How My Son is Teaching Me to Stop Trying to Be Successful – Jon Wilkening The Fruits of Our Labors – Steven Pressfield 7 Things You May Not Know About the Sistine Chapel – History.com Why Interviewing “Famous” People Is a Lousy Growth Strategy for Your Podcast – Srinivas Rao MC12: Rocking the Small Corners with Maisie Smith (mentioned in context of service and success without the big platform) The Crossroads of Should and Must – Elle Luna Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar – Cheryl Strayed Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation – Frederick Buechner The Art is Enough with Charlotte Eriksson In this Episode * Jon talks about his background in banking and finance and his struggles with both career and personal health that put him on the path to reinvention. * How photography and art helped pull Jon out of the downward spiral he was in prior to leaving his career behind, and the role creativity has played in helping him gain perspective on suffering. * The point where the bottleneck gets tight enough and change is inevitable. * The power of looking at the pebble sitting right in front of our foot instead the top of the mountain we’re trying to climb. * Jon: “There is a beauty and power in momentum.” * Jon talks about some of the steps he took to embrace creativity and art after leaving his old career behind (and the subsequent struggles to make it financially viable). * Why there is no “right way” to your creative path. * Brett: “There’s a right way if you’re trying to sell a book, but there’s not a right way if it’s your own life and trying to establish a foundation for change.” * The modern, linear definition of success and why that doesn’t always compute in this wide open, democratized age of creativity. * The classic artist models of patronage and why our view of success is historically flawed. * Why we leave a lot of the stories out of the equation based on our limiting perspective on success. * Jon: “This journey is hard enough trying to create the work that matters when you’re not encumbered by feeling like a failure […] trying to get a proper framework becomes vital to make it through t...

Distinct summary based on available episode metadata or transcript content.