Part of the passion is having the persistence and resilience to change both your art and the way you deliver it. Passion for your art also means having a passion for spreading your art. This means being willing to surrender elements that you are in love with in order to help the other parts thrive and spread. And at the same time, passion means

A day’s work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you’ll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to. When a day’s work does not equal a day’s pay, that means that at the end of the day, a

The self-hating artist burns out. The hypercritical lizard brain will pick apart anything we do in order to preserve its sense of short-term safety. The alternative is to develop a sense of loyalty to your mission and generosity to your work. I’m not proposing that you become immune to feedback. In fact, the most generous thing you can do is open

Wal-Mart wins because it’s cheap and close. Everyone else who wins must do it by being generous. And for that, you must be an artist and you need to mean it.

(And the twist, because there is always a twist, is that as soon as you focus on your art and leave the money behind, you may discover that this focus turns out to be the secret of actually breaking through and making money.)

Given the choice, though, most of us, most of the time, seek out art. We seek out experiences and products that deliver more value, more connection, and more experience, and change us for the better. You can learn how to do this if you want to.

When you focus on the second circle, when you work to charge more people more often, your art suffers. Instead, we profit most when we make the first and third circles as big as we can. Generosity generates income. This works whether you are selling paintings or innovation or a service.

We seek out experiences and products that deliver more value, more connection, and more experience, and change us for the better.

If it wasn’t a mystery, it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth much.