A short excerpt from a YouTube talk by Lennon Bone presenting a five-step framework for artistic success. This chunk covers Step 1—clarify what you want beyond vague goals like 'more money'—and Step 2—discover why you want it—recommending repeatedly asking 'why' (about five times) to reach deeper, emotional motivations.
Alright. In my mind, there are five steps to artistic success. The first thing is knowing what you want. And I often hear people say, more money, more freedom, more time. Those are not real answers. I think it's really important to look and say, well, what would more money give you? Well, it would give me more freedom or more time. Okay, well, what would you do with that freedom or time, which is really step number two, knowing why you want this thing. So don't only understand what you want, but why do you want it? But I'd encourage you to kind of do an exercise. At the very simplest. Just ask yourself what you want in your best scenario and then ask why, like, five times and see where it takes you. See how deep you can get to where you start to have some sort of emotional or visceral reaction.
