Name: The Work Is The Reward
Uploaded: 2026-03-13T07:37:02.000Z
Duration: 11 min 42 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

Now, before we get into this, I need to just preface this by saying I'm not a mental health professional at all.

Just take this with a huge grain of salt as just some guy on the Internet, okay?

But my hope, my prayer here is that something I'm going to say in this video will resonate with some people out there, and

Well, I really feel it's time that we have a really cold, hard look at mindset.

What does it mean to cultivate and craft and harness a beautiful mindset?

A mindset that serves you, A mindset that's unshakable, a firm, solid foundation that you can create your art from from without being blown around with either success or what you deem to be failure.

Why get out of bed this morning and decide to paint a picture?

And I think that as we have this conversation and as we all reflect on this thing, hopefully it's going to bring to us some clarity.

We're going to start to realize what our motivations are.

In a podcast that I had, in fact, virtually every time I've had Joe Paquette on my podcast, we've talked about the external versus the internal.

Well, we live in a world now where we're being pulled in so many different directions and everything is vying for our dopamine.

Everything is tantalizing, and we're going for this instant gratification.

We're feeling like we're being drawn towards this and the ideal that.

And we also go as artists, we go for external validation.

We want to get those good boy points or good girl points and get that pat on the back to feel good about ourselves because others are recognizing what we do.

I get that, you know, when a post doesn't get as many likes as I wish it had gotten, when it doesn't quite blow up or I don't have as many viral moments as I feel I'm owed, then, yeah, it can eat away at your ego a little bit.

But I find when I'm feeling that I'm not really dialed in and I'm not tapped into a mindset that serves me.

And so I think what I'm actually going to title this video Is the work is the reward.

Now, when I first started out, my overarching goal was keep the gig going.

Just as long as I don't have to go out and get a job.

Well, fortunately, early on, I was able to do that.

But what starts happening is as you're making these sales, you start catering and pandering to a market, you're feeling that pressure from externally, and

you start to give people what you feel people want.

I was no longer driven internally, I was driven externally.

When I'd go to galleries and museums and I would look at the work of the Old Masters, I was so blown away and so moved.

I found that all of these ideas were coming up for me as I was looking at the Old Masters.

I totally pigeonholed myself by painting nothing but landscapes.

And when I saw birds and portraits and still lives and works by the Dutch Masters, I was like, man, I want to get ton.

I'd kind of had enough of painting big red gorges for the Perth market.

Now, you can't say the word or spell out the word inspired without those first two letters.

I n in internal inspiration is your cue that this thing is driving you from within.

What actually, really, truly inspires you?

Not what's going to be popular on Instagram, not your best post, and

Naturally, when you start to think about what truly inspires you, it's going to be coupled with a little bit of fear.

Once we really set our mind and our hearts on what inspires us, it's that pull in the direction towards that external motivation.

We're suddenly worried that if we really act on what inspires us, it's not going to resonate.

We won't find our audience, we won't find our tribe or followers.

But let me tell you, the Internet, the world, it's a big place.

It's also getting smaller in the way that we're all connected.

But that makes it easier for you to find your audience.

Somebody out there is going to be into that, and they'll probably want to buy it.

If it's painting trout that are breaching that water as they go for a fly and you're feeling, well, game art, fishing art, that ain't really.

I'm saying that so you can go ahead and let this fear go.

If you put it out there and it's authentically you, then it will resonate.

Now, when we're driven from outside, when that external motivation shows up, I believe that this is a sign that we're not really quite on the right path.

They start to feel a little bit of burnout, and

then they get to a point where they just feel completely disengaged from their creative path.

All because they were chasing something from outside themselves.

They were never truly doing that thing that really scratched the itch, my friend.

Identify what it is right now that inspires you.

If that external validation is showing up, whether it's a point, a badge, an emoji, or a sale, what are you going to do?

This is where something that Tony Robbins said really resonated with me.

We don't necessarily have control over what happens, but

we absolutely have control over what it means when that thing happens.

I don't want to say this in a way that's insensitive to whatever you're going through.

But think about some of those things that have happened in your life and the meaning that you derived from that.

Ultimately, we have a choice what it means.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

The Work Is The Reward

ultimately

struggle

mindset

cultivate