Set Creative Goals - First Steps to Success | Ohn Mar Win | Skillshare
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Set Creative Goals - First Steps to Success

teacher avatar Ohn Mar Win, Illustrator Artist Educator

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Goals Introduction

      1:46

    • 2.

      Why Set Goals ?

      1:12

    • 3.

      Your Vision Exercise

      3:00

    • 4.

      Feeling the Fear

      1:51

    • 5.

      Writing Out Your Goals

      1:14

    • 6.

      Making a Goals Book

      3:48

    • 7.

      Making a Goals Video

      4:53

    • 8.

      My Final Thoughts

      2:12

    • 9.

      BONUS 1 - Create a Video with Apps

      3:01

    • 10.

      BONUS 2 - General Update and why affirmations matter

      3:23

    • 11.

      BONUS 3 - Affirmations that Have Helped Me

      5:11

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About This Class

There is a clear link between those who set goals and those who succeed, because they have a distinct direction to their chosen destination. Thinking about what you want for your ultimate creative life will give you guidance and help you make better choices based on your priorities.

Whether its attracting dream clients, becoming your own boss or creating art in a lofty studio, these can be achieved if you decide they are worthy goals for you. Everyone will want different goals, but first step is to define them. By setting clear targets you can see the progress you're making ( even if its little steps) and take pride in moving in the right direction. 

I only returned to the creative field 3 years ago after a absence of 8 years. If I had not thought of and then written out my goals I do not think I would have the sort of success (my version of it) I enjoy today. You may achieve some of your goals in a few months, some will take longer but just have a creative goal to work towards is in itself significant.

The world needs your talent, and for you to reach your potential creatively so lets truly be ourselves and pursue what matters to us. What goals would bring your passions alive?

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Ohn Mar Win

Illustrator Artist Educator

Top Teacher

Hello I'm Ohn Mar a UK based artist, illustrator author with a long and varied 20 year career.

I am a great advocate of sketchbooks having filled over 30, which each serving as a record of my creative journey as a self-taught watercolourist for the last 7 years. They have helped capture my explorations in texture, line and tone as I extend my knowledge with this medium. I also share process videos and sketchbook tours on my YouTube channel - please subscribe!

Filling my sketchbooks remains a constant in my life, and furthermore inspiring many folks to pick up a paintbrush. Oftentimes these sketch explorations provide the basis for classes here on Skillshare.

These days I'm is primarily... See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Goals Introduction: Hi. I am Ohm Mar. I'm an illustrator and surface designer and I've had a career in illustration for 20 years although I did take eight years out to look after my kids. It was only three years ago that I decided to return to full-time illustration. One of the first things that I did was to create a set of goals. Two of the things that I considered was the sort of clients I'd like to attract, how much money I'm earning, what my studio looked like. Goals are well-defined targets. They are like road maps to your success or what success means to you, and it will be personal to you. Each one of us is different. I'm going to share with you my creative goals for 2017 and take you through the process. In this class, I'm talking with a vision of where you ultimately want to be in your creative career. We will set them up in a way so that your goals are clearly defined. By writing them out in a goals book with official prompt, you will be highly motivated and hopefully spur you on into taking action. I will also show you a quick way of making a goals video, which is what I use now, which can be downloaded onto your phone and can be taken with you everywhere. When you look ahead with the dreams in your mind, you will see opportunities that you didn't see before. I can safely say that without my goals book and videos, I wouldn't have the art career that I have now where I'm paid to do what I love to do. It is said that goals are dreams with deadlines. Please join me in this class. 2. Why Set Goals ?: So I set goals. There's a clear link between people who set goals and people who succeed because they have a clear direction towards their chosen destination, like top athletes or business people. By thinking about what you want for your creative life, you can focus on what's important for you specifically, and they will be different for every person. It would be like having an inner compass that would help direct you by helping you make the right decisions based on your priorities. Having a series of clearly defined goals, which can measure and see the progress that you've made will help raise your self confidence and you start to recognize your own capabilities, and of course, at the end of the light, when your goal comes to fruition. I'd like to say at this point, that one of the keys to goal setting success is to make it as personal to you as possible. These goals will be yours alone and unique to you. You're the only one who really knows what you want. In the next video, I'm going to talk you through a vision exercise that will help you recognize some of your goals. 3. Your Vision Exercise: Goals can be used to focus on developing new skills or attracting that dream client, but it is important to have a clear vision of where you'd like to be before taking action.I highly recommend that you give yourself permission to try the following exercise, where you can imagine your ideal or dream creative life. You will need at least 15-20 minutes of quiet time.For this exercise,please just suspend your logic for those 15 minutes. This vision of the future should not be based on where you feel you are today. Please let your mind wander without any barriers and don't let the how am I going to get their limit your experience. I'd like you to pay attention to all the details that you see and feel and maybe heard and smell. Find yourself a really lovely quiet spot and sit comfortably. Please have a pen and paper or notebook handy. Then take three long deep breaths and allow yourself to really relax. Let your mind wander and then indulge in having the dream perfect creative day. In your mind's eye, picture your dream work environment. What does your studio look like? What prints do you have on the wall? What materials or equipment are you using? Can you seen what sorted of artwork you're making? Who are the clients that you're working with? Which markets are you involved with? Fabric, children's books, advertising? Perhaps you can imagine discussing a brief with one of your ideal clients. How much income are you attracting? Can you think of a specific amount? From which sources, like an online shop or branding or food styling? Are you your own boss? What does that feel like? Are you working with other creative people in the same environment or perhaps you're meeting up with your art friends? Try to remember all the feelings you felt when you saw all this happening. Was there a mixture of excitement, satisfaction and joy? When you finished, write down everything that you saw and felt as each image came up and keep these notes safe as you'll need these to devise your unique goals. I'd like you to really take your time over exploring sum of the things that you really want to attract in your creative life. Also other things might come up, like travel or family life, and please just drop them down. You can create goals for those aspects of your life too. When you do this, your subconscious brain would try to work out how to get to where you ultimately want to be. It will try to set up the conditions that will drive you towards your goal. It is like the phrase, planting the seed in your head. The goal is just the first step, and ultimately your creative life will grow. 4. Feeling the Fear: I'd like to say at this stage that you may be feeling some fears around the goals that you're seeing in your vision. I'd like to say it is a normal part of the process. Three years ago, I probably shared the same fears of not being good enough or not being intelligent enough, not being worthy even of attracting some of the clients that I have luckily managed to attract. I'd like you to not think too much about how you're going to get to that end place because it is part of this journey that you will have to travel and there will be challenges, but you're learning from them every day. There is that phrase from a well-known book that says, "Feel the fear and do it anyway." From my own personal experience, I do know that to be true. In order to attract some of the clients and jobs that I've been able to work on in recent times, it meant that I actually had to put my work out there and be vulnerable, and perhaps think that people are going to be judging me and things to that effect. But ultimately, my goal was to attract a cookery book to illustrate, and it happened. But it did mean that I had to take steps towards it and there was fear involved. But I'd like you to just take steps in the right direction and follow that in a compass. Within these goals, you could say things like, "I am letting go off all my limiting beliefs." Could say things like, "I am happily embracing my dreams." Just the fact of having a goal and stepping towards your goal is very significant, so well done for getting to this stage. 5. Writing Out Your Goals: Now we're going to convert some of the notes that you made from your vision exercise into actual goals. Start with the words, I am, as they are very powerful, and it feels like a command, and then attach a positive emotion. Try using, I am thrilled, or I am excited, I am delighted, or I am proudly doing something rather, make it very specific. Things like, I am delighted to work with Hallmark cards on a winter collection, rather than saying, I want to design greetings cards. Try to add something quantifiable like setting a date for achieving a goal. Like, I am excited to open an Etsy shop on May the 1st, 2017, or I am delighted to attract a 100 Instagram followers every week. Try to convert what you saw in your vision into a list of short, medium, and long term goals using this method. Please let me known in the class discussions if you're having any problems with wording or phrasing your goals. I'd like you to have really powerful ones that will excite you and motivate you, and I look forward to seeing them. 6. Making a Goals Book: Using well-phrased written goals along with visual problems, is a very effective way of recording your vision of your ideal creative life. Visual images hold amazing power because they will create positive response within you and they will focus your brain and also remind you of what's truly important in your life. Here we are looking at my goals book from 2014. This is the creative section of it and I have things like, I'm delighted that my art appears on fabrics and wall coverings and book covers and in Paper Chase and in advertising and also greetings cards. It's just very simply put together. This is moving onto my goals book from 2015 and it shows a trip to New York by [inaudible] , still trying to get my work onto packaging and to book covers and also a lot of travel. One of the best places I found for sourcing imagery for my goals book or video is actually Pinterest and one of my goals is I'm delighted to have my art on packaging and branding and I actually have a Pinterest board just for illustrating packaging design down hear. I think to myself, what would I really love my food art to appear on and I'm really drawn to this won. I'll probably drag this onto my desktop and what I think I'll do is add it with some of my own packaging design work. This is one of mine. Just so that when I turn to that page, it reminds me that my work would look great on packaging. Now one of the statements I like to add to my goals book is I'm enjoying my inner calm and I have a Pinterest board called calm and mindfulness. But let's say for my particular phrase, I'm enjoying my inner calm. It might be this one where she's in her own space and everything is quiet and she looks quite grounded. There might be another statement that says, I am enjoying painting in a quiet space. So that would be a picture that I would drag to my desktop and then we would print it out. You would choose whatever image that you feel corresponds with your goals or something that you feel speaks to you. I drag the images that I was particularly interested in and I've arranged them in a Photo-shop document. You don't have to arrange them at all. You could just print them out one by one. But I'm also thinking in terms of the goals videos, so I've arranged it in a fairly random way, but there are examples of my packaging and examples of packaging that I'd like to attract as well, so they're really good prompts for me. I'm using a sketch book, but you can use any notebook with plain paper and you'll also need a plastic pen and scissors and of course, the printouts of your images that are relevant to your goals. Now you simply cut out your printouts and arrange them in your notebook. Then you write out your goal underneath. I am thrilled to see my art on kitchen wares. Here we have the finished pages, as you can see, they're very simple to put together and is nothing elaborate and you use it as a visual prompt so that you can remember your goal and say every day. 7. Making a Goals Video: Now you saw this earlier which are the images that I use for the goal book, but I have also arranged them in Photoshop and now save them as JPEGs for the goals video, because we're going to upload them straight into the site. I'm using the same format, and I've left a little bit of room at the bottom so that I can include the goal when I type in. You may also want to consider adding some other useful phrases like I'm seeing golden opportunities everywhere, or I'm deserving of success and prosperity, or I'm persistent in reaching my goals. Just write them out and then take a photograph of them and put them in your video. [inaudible] free video making sites and the one I like to use is called Animoto because it's very simple quick, and I don't mind the little watermark on it. We will go to Slideshow video and press "Create", and it will come up with all the video styles. The one I particularly like to use is called timeless. Here, and I would like the background to be in white. I'll start to create the video, and this plus sign lets you add the images that you would like to show up in your video. What I'm going to do is drag images over from my Desktop, and they'll just just upload. If you hover over it, it says Caption. I'm going to add the caption, "I'm excited to illustrate countless book covers," and the next one is, "I'm overjoyed to have my art on packaging." I'm going to add the captions to all of these and also add the photographs of the phrases that I wrote out. I'm actually going to swap these around because I'd like a phrase in between each image. When you finish with this, you can go to PREVIEW VIDEO, and it will show you a really low or less version of what your video will probably look like. Press "PRODUCE", you can call it something. Up here, I'm going to call it Creative Goals 2017. The video quality is going to be fairly high but low enough to fit onto my phone, and press "FINISH", it's just creating it right now. It says here that it has finished, so I'm going to press "Download", which is here on the right. I have several options but only a few of them are free. I'm going to go for this quality, and it will download onto my desktop. Down to my downloads, here it is. I'm just going to drag it up here, and let's take a look at it. You can't really see the watermark, I don't have an issue with it. What I'm going to do next is to save a copy of it and put it in my Dropbox, and the Dropbox is linked to my mobile phone so I can access it, and we'll see what it looks like on my phone. 8. My Final Thoughts: Now I want to give you a few tips about how to use your goals book or video. As you look through it, hopefully every day just so that you're reminded every day about what you're really working towards, try and say out loud, and as you do so, try and conjure up those emotions that you first felt in your vision. Was it excitement? Was it just sheer exhilaration? Try to recall those feelings as you watch your video or flick through your goals book. The great thing about having the goals video downloaded on your new phone is it can be accessed wherever you are, even if you've left the country or you're on an airplane. Just be open to opportunities that may arise because you are now looking for them. I believe that setting goals is a great first step in achieving your creative dreams. As we lead increasingly busy lives, I believe your goals book or video will help you understand the bigger picture of your creative journey. As I mentioned previously, these steps that I've taken you through can also be used in other areas of your life, whether you'd like to look great in size 8. Please remember that your goals, whether they are creative or personal, are unique to you, and very much hope that you achieve your dreams because you really do deserve it. As I mentioned in the beginning, some of my dreams have taken a few years and it's been a bit of a detour in places, but ultimately I am very much enjoying the journey that I'm on to reaching other goals that I now have in my book. I hope that you'll achieve your dreams too. 9. BONUS 1 - Create a Video with Apps: As part of this bonus updated video, I want to show you a few apps that I use to create my goals video straight from my phone. What I do first is go to Pinterest and I have a actual board for common mindfulness, as you can see. You can download images straight onto your phone just by tapping on the three dots above each image. It should save to the camera roll of your phone. There it is there, along with a few other images that I've downloaded. I am going to mix these up with some of my own images just to remind me of the illustration goals that I have. Now we're going to look at an app that lets you put lettering onto your image. There are loads out there. Some of them are free, some of them you have to pay a small charge for. It just means that you don't have to muck about in Photoshop. Here's me putting in my affirmation. I'm happy to have daily time to myself to think and read. Various apps will do very similar things to this, where you can change the color, the font, and the size of your lettering to fit within your image. I download it back onto my phone. You'll see what we do with it next. Again, this is an app. There are many out there that will help you to put a flip video together of all the images on your phone. I'm just selecting the ones that I want to put into this flipper ground type video. There we are. Most apps will let you change the transition, and also the length of time that each image is displayed on the screen, and the transition between each one. For this particular video, I decided to have it in a portrait format. While it's in this state, you can edit it in case there's any changes you want to make before you hit the export button. Once you do that, it can be saved onto the camera roll of your phone and then you can view it. Here's my finished video. As you can see, not all the images have my affirmations on them. I just got to the stage where I can repeat them out loud without having to find the words. Some of the other images that I've mixed in with that are not my own but it's something that I aspire to. I don't actually have many ice cream illustrations but it's something that I want to do, along with traveling to lots of different places, preferably in business class. We also see there is a lot of inspirational quotes and phrases. That's just to remind me when I'm having a really challenging few days to just hold onto those words because that too will pass. 10. BONUS 2 - General Update and why affirmations matter: Hi there. I wanted to update this particular class because it's been about a year and a half since I first released it. I wanted to tell you about all the amazing, wonderful, and incredibly surprising things that have happened since then, things that I just couldn't have imagined. But I do think a large part of that was because I had goals that prompted me to take action. I've had wonderful class to work through producing Christmas cards and birthday cards, wrapping paper, cookery books, and entire cookery book. My finances have been so healthy and I'm so grateful that I decided to create goals to help me take action to be where I am now. I want to talk a little bit more about the automation side of things. This is what I've discovered since in the intervening period. I do think it's really important to keep a strong positive attitude. I know as creators, we tend to sink into negativity, but please try and keep positive and always use positive words that is going to benefit you. The word affirmation comes from Latin, which means to be steady or to strengthen. This is why it is important to get it right. When we speak or affirm our dreams and wishes for the future, what is actually doing is empowering us or reassuring us that those wishes are going to become part of our reality in the future. Repeating them over and over again on daily basis and I still do this myself. I do it every evening and when I wake up, just to clarify what I want to happen either that day or in six months time. It gets to the point where your subconscious starts to believe it and that's when it becomes that self-fulfilling prophecy. I think through affirmations it breaks down negative patterns of thinking, negative speech, and also negative aspects like self sabotaging. It feels like some of the massive goals, like having a $100,000 in savings is a bit too much. Start with small goals, like just to have a passive income of a $1,000 a month, which was one of mine at one stage. Don't forget a realistic date for its completion. In order to get that $1000, I worked at it for a good 6-8 months, but it was well worth it in the end. That's my last point. I must stress again, it's not going to be enough just to write down your goals or to repeat your affirmations. You actually have to take action. That's the only way that some of those dreams and desires are going to come true. When you start to take action, the opportunities will arise. But in that state, you are more open to seeing them as golden opportunities. Now, in this next part, I want to talk through some affirmations that have really helped me and I want to share my feelings about these. 11. BONUS 3 - Affirmations that Have Helped Me: The first affirmation I want to begin with, the confidence I need to succeed is within me. This is really powerful because you're probably holding yourself back because of low confidence. You might be spending a lot of time in your head worrying, putting yourself down and wishing things were different but when you have a healthy level of confidence, you can be in a much better zone to reach your potential. Confidence is the belief in your ability to succeed and that is going to stimulate a lot of action. I really like this one; my creativity flows freely, because it's quite an all encompassing statement. It means your imagination is boundless and your ideas are refreshing and new and they come effortlessly and that you can always find solutions and there is always creative potential. This says other things like being unique and being creative as a pleasurable thing which you will never run out of because your imagination is boundless. This affirmation was an important one for me when I started out four years ago. I am confident and skilled in my creative work, because none of us wake up one day and we have amazing watercolor or drawing skills. It's something that you have to work upon, but know that in a short time in the future, you are going to get to the stage where you are very confident in the skills and the clients can see that and so they're willing to put their trust in your skills. This is a really great affirmation to have. I have positive attitude of someone who never quits. I'm afraid quitting is not an option when you want success. You do have to find ways forward. If you have a positive mindset and you're willing to persevere, then you can get to your goals. The attitude of ready to work through any problems even in the face of challenges is what is going to make all the difference in your life. This one, I have the natural ability to create wealth and success is another one where you already have what it takes within you. The inner belief that you can build massive wealth is something that anyone can cultivate, it really is. It's like in your mind, the success and the wealth is already assured. You may not truly believe this at the moment, but it really starts with the mindset. If you believe you can get wealth and success, you're more likely to succeed than someone who doesn't really believe it. This one is so important, I trust I am where I need to be in my journey. We all started our creative journey somewhere. Some of us are a bit further along than others but you have to believe that even with all the detours, it was meant to happen this way in order that is there to teach us something. You might not realize it at the time. Don't let anything discourage you or lack of faith derail you because it absolutely is a process and if you start to doubt, just remember that at the end ultimately you are going to reach that goal. No word of a lie, once I started writing this down and thinking about this phrase, money comes to me easily and effortlessly, things started falling into place. Maybe holding onto certain beliefs that we were told as we were growing up that money doesn't grow on trees, it's really tricky to earn because you're an immigrant or it's the root of evil. I could create a class just on money mindset, but I won't. But once you realize that actually maybe holding onto a poverty mindset and you need to shift it onto an abundant mindset. I totally believe in this one; I am surrounded by positive and supportive people who believe in me. This journey that we're taking, if you want creative success can be a very challenging journey. I was very fortunate that I was able to surround myself with like-minded individuals who wanted the same creative outcomes as me and have a business where they could use their art to create beautiful images that can be put onto products. Sharing our goals and aspirations and also our challenges, of course, is a wonderful way to connect with people. I absolutely know I could not have made it to this stage if I didn't have the help and support of various friends that I found in Facebook groups or Instagram or right here on Skillshare.