steal like an artist

Steal like an artist written by Austin Kleon

An artist is someone who does things in a creative way. Anyone who pursues their passions in a unique way or chooses to travel on difficult paths to reach the undiscovered beautiful destinations of their life are having the aesthetic sense of an artist in themselves. In actual practice, there is nothing original or unique. Everything exist or spread around the universe. What we are doing is, we are adding our own perspectives or creativity and making them appear unique. The author conveys everything exists already and we steal it, but beauty and uniqueness reflects in those things which we steal like an artist. The book is about a few ideas to steal like an artist to do unique creations of your own.

We have to be open minded to the creations or work done by others, appreciate it, understand it and think about how to add more value by our own way to redefine it. The idea is embracing the influence and don’t try to run out of it and pretend it is a new creation of your own because nothing is original. Everything is a remix, whether you are creating a video, graphics, dance or anything, it takes influence from something else. Art work like 1 plus 1 is three manners. We are an average of the top 5 interactions we are making in a day today life So, embrace the influence.

It is not necessary to be great to start with something. But we need to start to become great. We have a tendency to wait for the right time because we are not yet prepared or we are yet to learn more. The stagnant phase has to change to make any change in life. In the process of doing something, the creative essence improves what we are doing and it eventually becomes great. We need not think about who we were to start something. In the process of a creative art, we will understand what we are. Life is about creating ourselves, not about finding ourselves. So, start before you are ready.

Now you may be wondering, how you can start something when you lack the experience. When you start doing things without the skill set or experience, and just imitating things from around, you may feel a guilty sense like you are fake. I experienced it whenever I talk in a motivational way to gear up others and I feel that I am still lagging behind the sufficient motivation inside to keep my life ahead.  When somebody talks about success, I used to become curious to know whether this person is really successful in life to give such a speech about success. Later, I realized the fact that in the process of doing all these stuffs, we can achieve it. It is not that we are pretending as somebody else but we are in the process of creating ourselves. But in that journey our ego tells us we are faking something, this ego talking is called imposter syndrome. We have to overcome this Imposter syndrome to start the things without the feeling of delinquency.

Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work as your own. In this book, stealing is referred to as taking influence and paying gratitude to them by adding our contribution to it. Stealing has to be understood with self-contribution whereas plagiarism deals with self- defeating. Steal, don’t plagiarize meaning steal from many resources, go to its depth, understand it and make it your own with your creative contribution.

When you are stuck with some problems in life, try to find the solution and spread it to the world. I practice it in its simpler sense, like when I encounter a question in a discussion which I find difficult to respond to, I use the resources first to find the answer. If I won’t get a direct answer. Then I give my effort to create the answer/ solution by collecting all base level information concerning the question and then I publish it as an article. Many of my writing got inspired in this manner. So, writing the book you want to read is the most inspiring message for me in this book which resonates with my life.

The book steal like an artist describes the lifespan of any creative work. The phases any creative work passes are: we start it with a thought that this is the best idea ever. Then in the beginning of the implementation phase we get the realization that it is harder than we thought. Then we understand some serious effort has to be put in to take it up. Then the draining of energy and the disappointment phase follows. We won’t be getting results as expected and then we feel like giving up. After, if we take a decision to push it ahead and finish it, we understand that we would have regret if we give up. Only at the finishing line, we realize it was not a wrong decision take up that task as we felt in the phase of disappointment somewhere in the span of the work. You will go through phases with motivation, less motivation and sometimes reach a point of no motivation but finish the task to understand the worth of creativity inside you.

What we take away from the book steal like an artist is more important than what we read. So, simplify everything in life so that you will get better clarity on whatever you are doing, in which part of your life there is a requirement of edit button, delete button, refresh button etc.

It is not always necessary to build things from scratch. You can build further from whatever is already built and make it more attractive. The author, Austin Kleon communicates that everything in the world is up for grabs, there is nothing like good art and bad art. There are arts which fall in the category of, the art which are worth stealing and the art which are not worth stealing. It is all about stealing something and presenting it as something different or better so that others can steal it.

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