My name is Steve and I am a people pleaser who makes stuff and shares it with the public.

This is both fun (I can make friends quickly!) and a nightmare (I hyper-focus on the people who don't like my work!).

As a result, I've largely avoided social media as a creative outlet for the past decade. I finally came to realize I was doing myself a disservice by not sharing my ideas with people who might enjoy them.

This is why I've waded back into the ruckus, sharing regularly on Instagram and Threads over the past month, and I'm actually enjoying it!

To help me focus on the important, I've been capturing my favorite quotes from performers and artists and writers who are in the same boat.

Let's get weird!

It's okay that you want to be liked

On a recent episode of his podcast, comedian Bill Burr joked about meeting his fans in public:

This the same struggle Bo Burnham shares in his amazing Burrito Ballad, where he's struggling with the very audience he's trying to entertain:

I feel this deeply in my bones.

I make my living by sharing my ideas publicly, but I also feel "deeply" and I often struggle to NOT let outside opinions dictate my attitude.

Being a nice person who cares what other people think about them isn't a bad thing.

The problem is that we have to remember we certainly can't control how people respond to our work. In fact, sharing art and having it judged is kind of the point!

The alternative is far worse.

Being judged beats being ignored.

Seth Godin wrote the following words of wisdom over a decade ago, and I've never forgotten them:

Bill Burr has a similar philosophy:

So!

If we feel driven to put our work out into the world, but we're ALSO deeply feeling and human when people say bad stuff about us, and we much prefer our work to impact people than for it to be ignored....

What the hell can we do about it?

Know why you're making it

For starters, we can internalize the reality that nobody is really spending that much time thinking about us.

They're too busy living in their own heads!

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, shared a great story in Big Magic:​

Next, we can make sure we're making art for US.

Did you see T-Pain's tiny desk concert?

T-Pain crushed it, and the internet exploded with surprise and applause. And it pissed him off:

Focusing on the people in our club is a great start.

But what if our work reaches such a large audience that the discord around our work takes over the cultural zeitgeist? What if we have millions of detractors?

How the hell do we stay sane?

There's one person better suited than anyone else in this realm.

Taylor Swift.

Focus on the part you can control

I always enjoyed Taylor Swift's music at a surface level, but it was 2016 GRAMMY Museum acoustic performance of "Blank Space" that cemented her as a world-class songwriter and talented performer.

Setting up the song, Swift discussed how the lyrics came together:

Swift managed to find a way to take the un-winnable battle against public opinion and make art out of it.

For her, it was the only viable path:

Start the next project today

The only part of the equation we can control is making the art. That's all we're entitled to. The rest is out of our hands.

As Elizabeth Gilbert says:

What's the best way to do that?

Get to work on the next project before the previous one comes out!

Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, shared this in a recent newsletter:

Ryan Holiday, author of a dozen books, follows a similar strategy: Holiday is always deep into his next manuscript by the time a book comes out, so whether or not it does well, he's too busy working on his craft to care.

It's because he doesn't want to wait for the world's permission to start again, so he's well on his way with the next project by the time the world can react to his previous work.

Let's close this out with one final quote from Swift's interview with Time Magazine:

If somebody doesn't like it, it wasn't for them.

And if they do like it?

Welcome to the club.

-Steve

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