How to Harness the Power of Emotional Resilience in your creative business
A few months ago I mentioned during a Q&A that I consider myself to be pretty emotionally resilient and find that it is especially helpful in my business. I got a lot questions about how I got to where I am today and the honest answer is that some of it was a survival mechanism from a couple intense jobs, and the rest was by design. I knew I personally needed to toughen up and learn how to neutralize my emotions better, so I set out to make that a reality. Today I am going to walk you through a few things I consistently work on to show up as my best self in my business.
But first, let’s establish a sort of baseline definition of emotional resilience:
Emotional resilience is the ability to adapt to stressful situations and cope with the natural ups and downs of business.
To me, emotional resilience means that I am existing in a place where I can thrive emotionally in my business, accept that both good and bad things will happen, and have the inner peace and strength to bounce back from anything.
If you have been in a service-based creative industry for any amount of time, you know that it is not for the faint of heart.
A huge part of my job is creating things that I love and am proud of, and then asking clients to tell me what they don’t like about them. I say that in jest, as it’s obviously an overly simplified version of our jobs. But the cold hard truth is that if you do not like people giving you feedback or if you are someone who is naturally defensive, you are going to have to do a bit of inner work to prepare yourself for survival in this industry.
Emotional resilience in your creative business will give you the endless well of energy you need to keep going day after day. It will allow you to get beat down from time to time (which will definitely happen) and spring back the next day, unharmed. It allows you to listen to a rude client tell you they hate your presentation, and somehow meet their poor tact with joy and enthusiasm. I am convinced that it is the secret to surviving and thriving in this industry.
Let’s dive in.
1) Leave your ego at the door
The number one way to develop greater emotional resiliency in your business is to leave your ego at the door. You need to really center yourself on the reason that your business exists – for me personally, it is to serve. If you find that you are constantly at odds with your clients, I would ask yourself if you have allowed your ego to become too intertwined with your business. This is where I found myself back in 2018, and I have been working to undo my ego ever since.
Am I the expert? Absolutely. I understand design better than my clients 100% of the time. However, they are the expert in their business and often really know what they are looking for. It is my job to give them that (within the boundaries that I set, regarding rounds of revisions, etc.). But the sooner that you abandon your need to have the final say on every single project and accept that your work is a collaborative effort, the sooner you can begin to see projects as a beautiful partnership in which there will be give and take.
2) Remember that you are not your work
The greatest challenge in my day-to-day working life is creating with passion and enthusiasm and intention… and then presenting the concepts knowing there is a chance my favorites will get changed or killed entirely. Something that I like to tell myself is that I can be emotionally invested in my client relationships, but not in my client work product. Does that make sense? I care about how I interact with clients. I care a lot less about wether they request the font be larger than I recommend making it. How I make people feel, if they feel taken care of, if I relieve their stress and anxiety around the design process – that stuff matters to me a lot. But how things actually look in the end after a client’s feedback has been applied? That matters a lot less. As soon as I was able to accept that I am NOT my creative output, I really began taking feedback in stride. I always say “If I LOVE a project, but my client doesn’t, then I have failed.”
3) Get Really Good at Receiving Feedback (also, Determine HOW you will receive feedback)
This is really hard to do. But you absolutely have to try. If you went to a design program or design school you are likely familiar with “crits” – basically, as students we would take turns pinning our work onto a giant bulletin board and then let our entire class and professor absolutely tear it to shreds. Which was really tough some days. But also an extremely valuable life skill. Receiving feedback is really hard. I honestly believe that as humans we are naturally wired to be defensive, and to become someone who can take feedback in stride and even embrace it as an essential and wonderful part of your creative business is gives you a huge advantage in this industry.
Something that I will do from time to time (if there’s no NDA) is send my client presentation to a few design friends and ask for their opinions. Typically a couple of people will have revisions/changes/suggestions that are either a) just plain helpful and I will make them or b) helpful in the sense that they get me primed to hear other people providing feedback about my work.
Also, control the controllables – determine exactly how you will receive feedback in your business. You’re the boss! I present all of my work via recorded video presentation and will no longer meet with a client to receive feedback via a call. Clients must submit all feedback via a written form prior to scheduling a feedback call. This gives me time to process, and come up with solutions or ideas, instead of feeling overwhelmed or at worst, becoming defensive. Most of my clients are incredibly kind. However, I work with so many people each year that it is almost impossible to not have a couple whose delivery is… less than ideal. This structure allows me to calmly process their thoughts without getting agitated.
4) Learn how to calm Client emotions with kindness
If you have ever been on a call with a frustrated client (again, inevitable if you have been doing this for 13 years), you know how terrible it is. I would say I have probably had only 5-6 of these over the past decade but early on I realized that I could very quickly settle agitation with kindness. If someone is upset with you for whatever reason, I would highly recommend setting aside all of your true feelings (maybe you are annoyed because you created exactly what they requested and “now that they’ve seen it” they don’t actually want that) and disarming them with a “I hear exactly what you are saying, and I understand. (or, I understand that you have changed your mind, or no longer want what you requested, etc.) Please know that I am confident that we will find a solution and you do not need to worry.” This is sort of like parenting. If your emotions are elevated, your child’s emotions will be elevated. The same goes for clients. Channel your inner zen. (Sometimes I have to dig really, really, really deep to find it.)
5) Go back and review examples of emotional discomfort from your past.
I have two primary clients who come to mind when I think of my worst moments business moments ever. One was my fault – I messed up a project and the client had already ordered $1,500 of merchandise, which I had to pay for. (My contract changed after this!). The other was a horrible client from early 2022 who was threatening, cruel, and rude. From time to time I force myself to think back on these situations because as they were both unfolding I felt like I would never get over what I was going through. Never! They both felt so insurmountable. And here I am today, stronger because of both of them. I lean into this when something less than ideal happens in my business. I know that I have and I can get through anything.
6) Take a beat – do not respond to ANYTHING that raises your heart rate immediately
Have you ever received an annoying email from a client? Of course you have. There is no way around them. Here is my best advice for when you feel yourself about to fly off the handle: do nothing. You must allow yourself calm down. Emotional resiliency doesn’t mean you never feel anger or frustration, it is about knowing how to manage yourself. So take a beat. Walk away. Work on another project. Allow the inner rage to subside, and then decide how to calmly proceed. Or, call. I am a chronic caller. It’s amazing what you can solve in 10 minutes on the phone vs 15 back and forth emails!
7) Find beauty in neutrality
I try my absolute hardest to approach my business and whatever I may be facing in any given week through a lens of neutrality. “This is happening. It is my reality.” Essentially it is a mindset that says: Nothing I can do, or say, or rage about, or spend my time thinking about, will change what is happening. So, I need to own it and figure out a path forward. It might sound a little out there that accepting that chaos will happen can make life less chaotic, but I have found this to be one of the most powerful tools in my toolbox.
Many years ago, I learned about this idea that we all have an emotional “range” – and at certain moments in our lives it can expand and contract. So, for example. You just gave birth – the highs are high and the lows are LOW. You are living in a place of extremes – everything is wonderful or everything is terrible! Other times when you are more emotionally durable, that window narrows and the highs and lows exist in a more moderate, healthy range. It has taken a lot of inner work in pursuit of neutrality to control
8) Channel your inner calm confidence
It is such a privilege to look after my clients each week. I get to take their creative pain points and stressors and eliminate them. Have you ever had someone do that for you? It can often feel like life is just a series of one problem after another, but when someone steps in and saves the day it is a tremendous feeling. My goal in being emotionally resilient is to be able to project a calm confidence so my clients know I can handle anything and will take care of them every step of the way.
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That’s it! Thank you so much for being here. Questions? Feel free to drop them below! If you are looking for a community of fellow driven creatives, learn more about my mastermind here.