From my upcoming book on how to positively handle rejection:

As I’ve stated elsewhere in this book, the artist embodies both the protagonist and antagonist—he either gets it done or does himself in. It is an internal affair.

If we could see the artist’s life from how God might see it, we would witness the canvas in toto. We would get a clear construct of what is right and wrong action for the play to unfold in the hero’s favor. From such an omnipotent overhead point of view, we would observe the dead ends and the opportunities. In other words, when the artist rises beyond the box and any limitation in dimension of his life, he can see dispassionately and that invariably leads to right action.

More from Mr. Bowles a half-century ago:

“You ask what decadence is. I should think in art and literature nothing is decadent but incompetence and commercialism. If I stress the various facets of unhappiness, it is because I believe unhappiness should be studied very carefully; this is certainly no time for anyone to pretend to be happy, or to put his unhappiness away in the dark. (And anyone who is not unhappy now must be a monster, a saint or an idiot.) You must watch your universe as it cracks above your head.”

—Paul Bowles (New York Times, 1952)

Look at the gestalt.

If you can create art, why not simply extrapolate your ability?

Create your life in the shape and form of prosperity. Draw upon the creator force within. You have the power. Like a floating decimal point, you can instantly move the dot—your own self—and raise the ante at any time.

And the point is this: to build your world, you must begin, you must start somewhere, anywhere.

In the beginning, I thought I heard the muse calling to me, beckoning me to write, enticing me to live a life that went beyond the suits and boots existence of business and going to brunch on weekends.

After many years of heeding a voice only I could hear, I ultimately realized that the muse, that goddess who encouraged me to swim upstream against the torrent of tradition and dogma, was not a construct of Greek mythology but my intuition—a faculty that has an assortment of definitions. Among other interpretations, intuition is the divine speaking directly to you, which I know to be so.

Still, this definition of intuition in all its clarity remains abstract until you hear and feel the voice of intuition for your own self. After that, there is no need to define it further because you have struck bedrock in the ways and means department of epistemology.

There are many different types of freedoms. Most people rank political freedom and financial freedom high on the list.

There is, however, only one true freedom and that is self-discipline, which sets the stage for all possibilities.

After a while it becomes evident to the evolved soul that it is not only pointless, but impossible to control others. It is much simpler and more effective to be in control of your own self. When you change your self, you do change your world—and the muses love the disciplined artist.