Breaking the Loop - Reframing the Question…

Showing up…

On success, slow seasons, and staying with the work

This reflection began, unexpectedly, with a vision board.

I had set aside time to look back before looking forward to the coming year — to notice what had worked, what felt meaningful, what I wanted to carry with me into the next phase. On the surface, it felt like a positive exercise. But almost immediately, I found myself tangled in knots.

When I tried to name my “successes,” my mind kept returning to one thing.

Sales.

And when sales are slow — as they inevitably are at times — that measure can quietly distort everything else. Looking back through that single lens, it felt as though there hadn’t been many successes at all. That’s when the negative feedback loop crept in.

Confidence wavered. Momentum felt fragile. I began questioning the work, the pace, myself. Yet nothing fundamental had shifted — I was still showing up, still making, still exploring. The only thing that had changed was the way I was measuring worth.

It took a while to realise that I was asking the wrong question.

Instead of “What sold?”
I needed to ask, “What moved me forward?”

Defining Success Differently

For this next phase, I’ve had to consciously redefine what success looks like to me — not as a way of avoiding the realities of earning a living as an artist, but as a way of breaking a cycle that was quietly undermining my confidence.

So I’m trying this instead:

• A successful studio session is one where I learned something

• A successful piece is one that surprised me

• A successful week is one where I showed up three or four times, even briefly

Right now, sales are not the feedback loop.

Confidence is.

Mary Oliver writes:
“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
— Mary Oliver

Attention — to the work, to the process, to the quiet nudges of curiosity — feels like a far more honest measure of progress.

And perhaps success, at least for now, lies in staying close to that.

Making Peace With Sales (Without Letting Them Lead)

This isn’t about pretending sales don’t matter. They do. They sustain the practice and make space for the work to continue. But when sales become the only measure of success, they carry too much weight — especially in slower seasons.

Rebecca Solnit writes:
“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.”
— Rebecca Solnit

For me, hope looks less dramatic and more practical. It looks like turning up. Making the work anyway. Trusting that the quieter periods are not empty — they’re often where the roots grow.

Sales, I’m learning, belong to the longer arc of the practice. Confidence belongs to the day-to-day.

An Invitation to Pause and Reflect

If you’re reading this and finding echoes of your own experience — perhaps in your creative work, your business, or simply in life — I invite you to pause and ask yourself:

• What would success look like if it wasn’t measured by outcomes alone?

• What happens when you notice effort, attention, and persistence instead?

• What quiet wins have you overlooked?

As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
“Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke