Honesty Is Key

Hi everybody, welcome back to The Artist Tao You're here with Jenny and Sean Starr. And today our next principle is honesty is key. Honesty demands strength. It will expose things about yourself that you do not want to see. Cultivate an appetite for honesty. How much time do we have?

Yeah, that one's, the nature of that's completely different than some of the others.

Do you remember how you came about this principle?

I think that one is mostly, I was going through a huge transition in my personal life at the time that I was compiling these and kind of came to the realization that to move forward, I needed to really be honest with myself. I remember, I think I've told you this before, but I had gone to see a counselor and she's asking me these questions and this is all to do with issues in my personal life, which some of it included addiction and other things. She's having me explain these different events in my life and then midway through the one question she had asked me and I'm giving my answer. She stopped me and she says I wanna end the session right now and I want you to do this exercise until the next session. And I said, okay, what is that? And she said, I want you to, as you're driving, as you're going through your day, I want you to think about, whatever you're thinking about, I want you to interrupt yourself and add to that in that moment. “But the truth is…”, and then fill in the blank. And that was the most horrible thing I've ever had anyone do to me because it was like, wow, wow, wow. Like I am so full of crap.

And you know Do you still use that, but the truth is?

Oh, absolutely. You know, once you see that, you can never go back and it's -Yeah, it's always there after you've been exposed to it, because you're like, wait a minute, whatever story I'm running, but the truth is what? And then you're taking inventory and you realize, wow, okay, I'm not being completely honest about this or about my feelings on it or my viewpoint. Yeah, it's a very powerful exercise and I'm sure she unleashed it knowing that.

But yeah, I mean, that's a very personal thing on personal growth, but it's so intertwined with working as an artist because if you're not honest with yourself and with your expression and with your work, you're not gonna get anywhere.

Because why?

Because people can sense when you're full crap, they can tell from a mile away. And if you're not confronting and dealing with that, no one's gonna engage with your work and you're not going to really accomplish anything of meaning. There's plenty of people out there that create all kinds of art forms and it seems to be even more so visible to me in like film and TV and music where there's people creating things that make money and they have success and they've got this team of people behind them, propping them up and you know, they're doing auto tune on their voice or, you know, putting big ads out for them or whatever. There's success there, but like it's, it's disposable. It's like junk food, you know, it's not real substantive art by any means.

I would say honesty is key you know, because it really encourages you to be in your heart too, because you can't really hide when you're being honest.

Yeah, and that's what we all crave. That's what we all want from everyone else around us. We want, you know, we want them warts and all. We want the honesty of understanding who they really are, what their motivations are, what's in their heart. And... I think we've all been on the receiving end where if you've been deceived by anyone, which everyone has, like that's so deflating and so creates so much disillusionment when you realize, oh, wow, this person has basically been lying to me. They haven't been their true self. And that's... as an artist, I think you have to be a real caretaker of that connection you're building with people when they do engage with your work is, you know, there can't be deceit. There can't be. And that's why I think the marketing of art is so, can be really gross is because there's a certain level of like trickery and.

Um, There's a certain level of deception that comes with what we call marketing. It's this whole, the phrase I heard years ago was sell the sizzle, not the steak. All of this stuff, and it's all about basically tricking someone into buying your product and all of these really gross ideas. And then to apply that of all things, to art is just makes it even worse to me. So, you know, I do think that being your, to the best of your ability, your truest self involved with your art is, it's not only the only way, but it's the only thing that seems to make any genuine, meaningful connection with people. Do you think it would make a difference?

Like if, an artist maybe was in a state or a part of their evolutionary process of like maybe not being so honest with themselves, do you think it would affect what they're creating?

Yeah, I do. Like in what way? It's what we talked about with one of the other principles of tapping into your genuine self, being yourself, is if you're not doing that, you're not being honest because that's all you've got is you. And if you're not doing that, then how are you going to connect with someone in a genuine way? It's kind of like if you were in a romantic relationship with somebody and, you know, they kept something huge from you. Like, you know, you hear these crazy stories about this guy with his wife and kids, and then they find out years later he had a different wife and kids in another town.

Yeah, or like three blocks over or something.

Yeah, it's just totally nuts. Like who does that? But then at the same time, it's like, what kind of like anguish does that put into, you know, the people in his life who was like, well, wait a minute. I mean, you got now two families most likely that you know, thought this guy was something else and that they were the only ones. And so when you're talking about like with an artist and then the people that he or she connects with, with their work, it's like, there's a trust relationship there that builds. And if those people find out at some point that, you you've been misleading them by, you know, portraying yourself as something you're not, like that's a devastating thing because to me it's like, at what point, like what's left to trust? I mean, we've already seen in recent decades, I mean, there's not much of our institutions left that you can really have trust in. So if we start losing trust in each other, especially people that are trying to communicate beautiful ideas like, Wow, we're really lost. There's the train again.

Yeah, honesty demands strength.

Definitely demand strength because... We're really good at deceiving ourselves and tricking ourselves and telling ourselves that we're perfectly fine.

Wow, that's a loud one today.

Yeah, they've been like that all day, actually.

But yeah, it takes a lot of strength to look at yourself in the mirror and be honest with what's your motivation? What are you really trying to do here? You know?

Is this money motivated? That to me is like my big... sore spot that I come back to because I've had so many people, including family members over the years, prodding me to essentially monetize the different things that I've been able to experience and participate in with art. And it's like, yes, you do have to support yourself and... keep the thing moving and, you know, sure, everybody hopes that there's comes a time where things get easier because there's more money coming in, you know, for whatever you're doing. But if your motivation is I want to go out and I'm going to like make my mark and make a bunch of money and do all this stuff like that to me is like you're deceiving yourself.

And then you're turning around and deceiving everyone else because you're just looking at them as a way to like, you know, to line your pockets. So the next line is it will expose things about yourself that you do not want to see.

So what do you recommend if let's say somebody is in that position where they are recognizing something about themselves that they wish maybe they had unearthed or, you know, how do you digest that through your artwork, through writing?

I don't know, it's different for everybody, but that's kind of like, I mean, that's the spiritual process. And I do feel art is spiritual, but that's the spiritual process is unearthing those things, confronting them, working through them, improving yourself. I mean, you really only have two choices. You can either confront your demons or you can, you know, live alongside them and act like nothing's happening. There's really no middle ground. So might as well get on with confronting stuff. It took me a lot of years to really apply that. It's like back in 2006, I knew that, but I didn't really confront issues with addiction or issues of what I really believed and thought about the world around me, even though that would create a humongous rift in my family that...

You know, oh, you don't believe things the way we do. You know, we don't want to talk to you. Um, you know, but how do you want to live? Do you want to, do you want to live as your true self and live with honesty? Or do you want to live hiding from that and essentially lying to people, even if you are, you know, even if you're quote unquote, lying to them to kind of protect their feelings and just not rock the boat, it's still lying. So the more I leaned into that, the more I felt I was creating work that was connecting with people and expressing myself more clearly. And that's what it's all about.

Yeah. So did you, is that what I heard you say? So when you were on, during that process of like really unearthing those things, that the work that you were creating was connecting more so with people at that time, do you think?

Or have you noticed that? I don't know, like that's measurable.

I don't know, like, you know, you can't really measure things in numbers when it comes to art. Like, just because, you know, a painting sells for, you know, record $80 million at Sotheby's or something, it doesn't mean it's a great painting that a bunch of people love. So it's more like the one -on -one experiences is... to me how I've measured that is, like when we were going through the process of editing, well, we weren't directly involved with the editing, but when we were involved in the process of adding the supplemental information with Dan and Sarah with the film about Nepal, there's just kind of like this groove and this harmony that develops. And it's all based on honesty. Like, you know, we would sit and we would talk and they would be like, you know, what are your, what are your feelings when we went to this spot and we interviewed this person in Kathmandu? And, you know, that encouragement from them was to be like, just to be fully honest with what I really felt about it. And I was meeting that with my own commitment to.

I'm not going to think about what someone's going to think about me saying this. I'm just going to be as real and honest as I can be. And then you end up with this result that you're like thrilled to have and proud of and they're proud of and everything else because that honesty is, that's the baseline. And you know, I've just seen it over and over throughout the years is, you know, when I'm working from an honest place, I do my best work and people engage with it in a way that's meaningful.

Cultivate an appetite for honesty. Start to like it.

It takes time, but you eventually do. You eventually see that it's the high road and that it's always a better result and it's always more fulfilling and it's always more meaningful. And, you know, it's really interesting to me. Like, I don't think addiction ever goes away. You can just move it into a... a good pursuit or a bad pursuit. And so recognizing that, I've tried to apply like, um, that process, that repeating process with addiction of putting that into things that are healthy and upbuilding. I would rather be addicted to being honest than I would be an addiction of some substance or whatever.

So, you can see it of like people that you see outside of like AA meetings you know, are typically outside chain smoking. It's just like, they just kind of rolled it into that, which I don't know if that's all that great of a substitute, but it just, it doesn't seem to leave people that have that challenge. The addiction part. Yeah. It's just, you know, I mean, I'd rather be addicted to being honest and meditating, which is kind of what I did, um, then alcohol or pills or anything else. It's, um, you know, that's opened my life up and made my life better. So I'll stick with that addiction. Thank you very much.

All right. Honesty is key. Honesty demands strength. It will expose things about yourself that you do not want to see. Cultivate an appetite for honesty.

Thank you. See you next time.