For artists, life often mirrors art — full of possibility, yet sometimes overwhelming. We’re dreamers and doers, visionaries and craftspeople.

Our creativity fuels us, but it can also leave us adrift in a sea of ideas without a clear destination. Setting life goals as an artist should never feel like you’re stifling your creative spirit — but about giving it direction through mindful productivity.

Here’s how to harness your creative energy and turn your artistic dreams into reality. 🫶

💗 Understanding the Importance of Goal-Setting for Artists

Having aligned life goals can be the North Star that guides us through the sometimes chaotic, but always colorful journey of an artist’s life.

But it’s important to distinguish between overall life goals vs. career goals, ensuring that your artistic pursuits align with your personal values and long-term aspirations.

If you’ve ever worked in a job that goes against your values, then you’ll know how important that is to living a truly fulfilled and purposeful creative life.

💨 Creativity vs. Career Objectives

You might be asking me, “But wait, doesn’t setting goals kill creativity?” Working with some simple goal-setting strategies is super important to balance your love for creating with your passion for hitting some amazing goals you have for yourself.

Some examples of life goals might be:

• Quitting your full-time job and pursuing your art full-time
• Being able to work 2-3 hours a day
• Having a beautiful and creative home where you can enjoy being creative in whichever process you want

But there’s a nice balance between having amazing creative goals and dreams and also enjoying the journey — which is something I talk about a lot on my YouTube channel.

✨ How to Set & Achieve Life Goals as an Artist

Before I start, it’s important that you know I don’t believe in just one life goal. Your life itself is a miracle, and the ability you have to be a creative is even more of a miracle.

Throughout your life, you’ll have mini goals — and I want to help empower you to achieve that. While I’ll use the phrase “life goal” because it’s more familiar, know that these are all in the realm of mini goals throughout your life. You are enough merely existing and creating.

🧘‍♀️ 1. Identifying Your Artistic Vision, Values and Lifestyle

You need to find that sweet spot between working towards your dreams and enjoying the journey.

Before getting too caught up in all the personal development talk, really take a moment to reflect on what truly matters to you. What kind of art makes your heart sing? What values do you want your work to embody? How do you envision your ideal day-to-day lifestyle?

This is all about envisioning what each and every day — or week, or month — will look like in whichever next phase of your creative life you’re working towards.

🎨 2. Make a Vision Board

Grab some magazines, photos, quotes — anything that resonates with your aspirations. Arrange them on a board in a way that feels right to you and place it in an area that you will absolutely see every day. Your subconscious doesn’t know the difference between seeing a picture of something and seeing it in real life. And it’s going to manifest more and more of what you’re seeing to bring into reality.

The more you place your goals into your vision, the more likely you are to achieve them. Pair that with goals (which we’ll talk about in a second) and you’re GOLDEN.

🌀 3. Use Affirmations and Meditate with Headspace

Meditating is one of those things that I always knew I needed to do but could never really imagine myself sitting criss-crossed with my hands on my knees. Sometimes the days get away from you but you still need the time to be mindful.

Headspace has been an awesome way to help me fall asleep at night and clear my thoughts if I’m ever feeling really anxious or overwhelmed. I usually use it on an as-needed basis (most days when I go to sleep, though) but I would love to make it a regular practice in my day-to-day life to slow down!

🧠 4. Make Goals into SMART Goals

You’ve probably heard of SMART goals before, but let’s give them an artistic twist! SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. For example, instead of “I need to finish this project,” try “I need to finish the background of this project in 2 hours or less.”

Achieving some life goals by using SMART goals helps turn those big, dreamy aspirations into concrete, actionable steps.

🕸️ 5. Achieve SMART Goals Through Artist Systems

Big goals can feel overwhelming. That’s why it’s crucial to break them down into smaller, manageable tasks. Goals are the big dream — systems are what makes them happen.

If your goal is to improve your digital art skills, your system might include practicing for an hour each day, watching one tutorial video a week, and joining an online art community for feedback and support.

Habit-stacking can be a really helpful way to do this.

☘️ 6. Be Your Own Creative Team of Three

Here’s a fun exercise: imagine you’re not just one artist, but a team of three! You’ve got the Dreamer who comes up with wild, ambitious ideas; the Realist who figures out how to make those ideas happen; and the Critic who helps refine and improve your work.

By embodying these different perspectives, you can approach your life goals from multiple angles. It’s like having your own personal creative advisory board!

You can learn more about how to do this in the video below 👇

👯‍♀️ 7. Find Accountability Buddies and Coworking Spaces to Keep You On Track

Art can be a solitary pursuit, but achieving your life goals doesn’t have to be! Find an accountability buddy, or another artist who shares similar aspirations and schedule some co-working time together!

Hop on Facetime, and spend an hour (Pomodoro or not) on a project together. Check in at the beginning about your goals, and then check in again at the end to see how your progress went.

You can also join paid subscriptions like Flow Club for a more structured session.

🫡 8. Use the Principle of “Keep Going”

Let’s be real – the path to achieving your life goals won’t always be smooth. There will be days when your creativity seems to have abandoned you, when you’re filled with creative blocks, and when you wonder who is even seeing all your hard work.

Especially when you’re just getting started, you need to use the principle of Keep Going.

Watch this video to explore this concept even more 👇

🦄 9. Find Delighters and Ways to Celebrate

Apps that have little delighters like Asana and Blitzit are great with making little celebrations whenever you’ve checked off a task.

You can do these delighters for life goals examples in real life, too. For instance, I’ll take myself out to a local food hall to get some sushi whenever I know I have a long day of working. This keeps me motivated and happy and gives me a little reward as I’m working.

This is also the beauty of creating subtasks — it not only makes you more effective and clear on the goals you’re pursuing, but it also gives you a reason to celebrate and see that you’re making progress on bigger tasks.

💅 10. Find Your “Gentle Rebel” Skill

Everyone has Gentle Rebel Skills— or leverage — they can use to help them in their creative endeavors. Maybe you majored in Computer Science in college — bam, you have a huge leg-up on being able to find a remote job so you can build your wealth, do some long-term planning, and eventually invest that money back into your creative career so you can do that full-time, instead!

Have you worked as a waitress? Awesome — you have customer service experience and can likely find some remote customer service jobs remotely so your job can be less stressful and taxing on your body.

Whenever my friends tell me, “well, I don’t have any skills,” I say bulllllll. EVERYONE has leverage, whether it’s the people they know, the work they’ve done, the skills they have. Heck, one of my Gentle Rebel Skills is being able to wake up early! Bam, that means I can be more efficient and get my Cozy Girl Job work done faster so I can work on my aspirations of being a singer-songwriter and performer full-time.

♥️ Love Your Creative Career: Subscribe to Violet Gaze on YouTube

If you’re hungry for more inspiration and tips on navigating your creative career, I highly recommend subscribing to Violet Gaze on YouTube! Whether you’re looking to start your fresh-out-of-college creative career on the right foot, transition from your full-time job to finally being the full-time artist you always knew you were, or just embarking on the journey you’ve been on with a little more community by your side, I want you to know you’re not alone.Your goals in life are valid and achievable — dream big, plan smart, and most importantly, keep creating. 🌞