3 ways a Wabi Sabi mindset is useful for a creative solopreneur
Wabi Sabi, the Japanese wisdom about finding beauty in simplicity, appreciating the imperfection, impermanent, and incomplete nature of life, is such a useful way to approach creative entrepreneurship.
My intention is, as always, to share when I find natural, calm and kind ways to keep my creativity flowing.
Beth Kempton describes Wabi Sabi in her book about Wab Sabi, as the Japanese wisdom for a perfectly imperfect life.
Her book is as beautiful as it is insightful, and I could quote every page, but I’m hand-plucking a few summaries from her book to fit this blog post, about why this intuitive Japanese wisdom is more than useful for a creative solopreneur.
In my mind, it just makes sense.
In my last post, I wrote about tips for working with a creative mindset.
Why all the mindset posts?
So much in life, creativity and business, is about how we see things, how we approach things, and how we deal with things. You’ve probably experienced too, how a change in mindset completely can change your situation?
If I find tools to help calm my nervous system, and at the same time inspire me, I like to share them here on my blog.
After each tip, I have included a small question to spark your wabi sabi mindset. You can skip them, of course, they are there if you want them.
3 ways a wabi sabi mindset is useful for a creative solopreneur
To understand how this Japanese mindset is worth adopting if you’re someone with a diversity of creative ideas, and also if you have, or plan to, embark on the uncertain path of entrepreneurship, here are some sentences from her book that explains the mindset of wabi sabi:
Wabi Sabi is an intuitive response to beauty that reflects the true nature of life.
All things, including life itself, are impermanent, incomplete, and imperfect. Therefore, perfection is impossible, and imperfection is the natural state of everything, including ourselves.
It’s a recognition of the gifts of simple, slow, and natural living.
There’s great beauty, value and comfort to be found in simplicity.
Wabi Sabi is a feeling, and it is intangible. One person’s wabi sabi is not the same as another’s
It’s less about what we see, more about how we see.
I could go on, but I’ll stop here. :)
I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a beautiful mindset to adopt and live by.
Although I don’t for a minute suggest you can instantly adopt an ancient Japanese wisdom from reading a blog post, I will hand pluck just 3 wisdoms from Beth Kempton’s book on wabi sabi, and maybe inspire you to carry this wisdom in your own rucksack, as you walk further along your own path, as a creative and entrepreneur.
Wabi sabi tip 1:
Working with imperfection, impermanence, and incompletion
This, I feel, is a huge permission slip to normalize the frantic and exhausting constant search for the “one right” business/tagline/marketing/passion… you fill in the rest.
Imperfection is not a compromise, as we are sometimes led to believe, but actually the natural state of reality in everything, including ourselves, our business ideas, our marketing efforts, our website, etc.
There is no perfect business idea, or brand look, or customer, or positioning. There is the business idea, brand look, customer, and positioning we have right now.
The natural flow of all things is impermanence.
If you identify as a multi-passionate creative, virtual high five!
It’s as if adopting this wisdom makes me understand that trying to stay the same is fighting against the unnatural flow of life, and the same goes for business.
So, when we try so hard - sometimes years - to land on a “perfect” business that holds all our passions, skills and experience, maybe we can reframe this to “what is the business that will serve me and a customer right now?”
Question for you:
Knowing that imperfection is the natural way, where is one area in your business you can let go of tweaking, and move forward?
Wabi sabi tip 2:
There’s beauty, value, and comfort in simplicity.
You’re wearing all the hats as a creative solopreneur, aren’t you? Flippin’ heck! Not many!
I don’t know about you, but I’m forever on a quest to simplify as much as I can in my life and in Creators Process.
This is why my marketing of choice is SEO for Google and Pinterest.
I cannot be dealing with social media and being on all platforms.
I like as simple a set up as possible. My emails are sent from Squarespace, where my website is, and where my future workshops will be housed.
Simplifying the complicated is super difficult, and it takes a little creativity.
For example, building a simple, effective and SEO optimized website is no easy task. It’s much easier, and tempting, to add the latest trendy bells and whistles, because they’re cool.
No, a simple and useful website… what a thing of beauty!
Question for you:
What is one small area in your business you can simplify?
Wabi sabi tip 3:
It’s not what you see, but how you see it.
In relation to creative solopreneurship, I feel this speaks to trusting our intuition in situations where we feel we have to follow expert advice, but it doesn’t sit well with us.
How you see something is not necessarily the same at how someone else sees the same thing, and that doesn’t make you wrong.
I know this sounds lofty, but if you’ve ever followed advice against your better judgement, you’ll know what I mean.
“One person’s wabi sabi is not the same as another’s”.
Maybe you see beauty where someone else doesn’t?
There’s such a fine line in entrepreneurship between when to follow “best practice”, and when to follow your own practice.
If we all follow the same advice on branding, as an example, won’t we all end up looking like the same versions of a slightly different thing?
And anyway, business is about standing out loudly, and about mattering, and connecting, and helping create better conditions for people and planet.
Question for you:
How would it feel to trust your intuition just a little bit more today?
My own wabi sabi approach in Creators Process
My photography on Creators Process is deliberately imperfect, natural, and simplistic.
Those 3 words pretty much sum up my visual style, my coaching, and me. ;D
I am only interested in natural materials in the clothes I wear, and interior style. I love seeing the authentic and imperfection of people, creative work, and imagery.
I am not a fan of filters, and pretty brand photography that looks the same throughout a website. I know it’s “the right branding way”, says… everybody, but it’s not for me.
My photos are of imperfect, natural objects I notice in my life. It’s my practice of noticing and paying attention to the beauty right where I am. Very wabi sabi.
My mind is a busy place, so it is highly important to me that my surroundings are simple. I don’t wear patterns, I prefer simple clothes, style, cooking, you name it. Complication and drama is not for me.
Adopting an intagible feeling like hygge and wabi sabi
It’s not easy to explain and understand a deep wisdom, feeling, and knowing an entire nation has in their DNA, in words they never use themselves.
I reckon every Danish person old enough to talk, knows what hygge is, but until it became an international trend, it wasn’t something we ever had to explain.
Explaining hygge is another blog post, I will just quickly say, that just like wabi sabi, hygge is a feeling and it’s intangible. Cozy blankets and candles doesn’t quite explain it.
If you found this post useful, I’d love for you to get my emails too. That’s a place I share most of what is going on in front and behind the scenes. .)
