Listen to: “How to Set Goals Without Crushing Your Soul as an Artist” on:
How to Set Goals Without Crushing Your Soul as an Artist
Setting goals as an artist can feel strangely heavy. You want clarity, direction, and momentum—yet so many goals end up draining your energy instead of supporting your creativity. If you’ve ever written a beautifully organized plan only to feel defeated by week two, you’re not alone.
Artists across every discipline—dancers, actors, singers, writers, and visual artists—often create goals from pressure, fear, or comparison. And pressure-goals don’t make you more committed. They quietly crush your soul.
This post explores how to set aligned goals—goals that grow you instead of breaking you.
Why pressure-based goals fail artists
Artists don’t thrive under the same motivational systems as other professions. You’re sensitive to meaning, identity, emotional truth, and nervous system cues. When a goal feels unrealistic, rigid, or fear-based, your body shuts down.
You may recognise some of these patterns:
You set a goal that looks “right” on paper but feels wrong in your body.
You plan a huge year because you feel behind—not because it’s aligned.
You repeat last year’s goals out of guilt rather than clarity.
You abandon goals quickly and assume it means you’re undisciplined.
But the real issue is much simpler:
Pressure-based goals aren’t designed for artists.
They create internal conflict. They ask you to operate from self-punishment instead of self-connection. And they mistake productivity for worth.
Artists don’t quit goals because they’re flaky—
they quit goals that violate their creative identity.
The psychology behind aligned goal setting
Motivational psychology shows that the brain resists goals that feel like a threat to identity. Artists feel this even more intensely because your creativity comes from your sense of self.
When your goals come from fear—fear of being forgotten, fear of falling behind, fear of proving yourself, fear of not being enough—your nervous system goes into resistance. Your creativity freezes. Your emotional safety collapses.
But when your goals are rooted in identity, not insecurity, something shifts.
Aligned goals feel like openness, clarity, energy, possibility, and truth.
Here’s the truth line:
Pressure creates panic. Alignment creates longevity.
This is why dancers thrive with goals built around joy and strength, why writers flourish when they choose meaningful output over massive output, and why actors progress most when they choose goals that honour their current season—not a fantasy timeline.
Alignment lowers resistance—not your standards.
What aligned goals actually look like
Aligned goals take into account your season, your nervous system, your life load, your identity as an artist, and your long-term creative rhythm.
One of my coaching clients—a singer in a demanding season of motherhood and work—kept setting goals that belonged to her younger, freer self. Every year, she felt like she was failing.
She didn’t lack talent.
She didn’t lack discipline.
She lacked alignment.
When she finally shifted to one meaningful project per quarter, everything opened. Her creativity returned. Her confidence rebuilt. Her voice strengthened.
Aligned goals feel like truth in your body.
They sound like:
“This year I’m rebuilding confidence in my craft.”
“This month I’m creating one hour a week—because sustainability matters.”
“This season I’m choosing depth over quantity.”
Aligned goals support your artistry instead of suffocating it.
A healthier way to approach your next creative season
Here’s the reframe that changes everything:
A goal is not a performance metric.
A goal is a conversation with your future artist-self.
And that conversation should feel like partnership—not self-punishment.
When you create aligned goals, you stop abandoning your creativity and start becoming the kind of artist who can sustain it.
You are not behind.
You are becoming.
Creative Spark
Choose one goal for the next month that feels honest, not impressive. If your body exhales when you say it out loud, that’s your aligned direction.
Free support for artists
Watch my free Artist Mindset MASTERCLASS video download
If you need a reset — not a retreat, not a reinvention, just a grounded way to restore your creative energy — download my Creative Reset Masterclass.
It’s a free 30-minute video you can watch any time, designed to help artists recover from output pressure and rebuild with clarity.
👉 larabiancapilcher.com/masterclass
This reflection is part of the ongoing Audacious Artistry conversation — the book, group study and movement to help artists reclaim their creative identity in a saturated world.
About Audacious Artistry
Your creative identity matters.
My book, Audacious Artistry: Reclaim Your Creative Identity and Thrive in a Saturated World, is now available to order.
It’s written for makers, performers, storytellers, and creative souls who want clarity, courage, and a stronger sense of who they are as an artist — especially in a world that moves too fast and asks you to prove your worth.
📘 You can order it now at: https://larabiancapilcher.com/book
Listen to: “How to Set Goals Without Crushing Your Soul as an Artist” on:
With you on the journey,
Lara Bianca Pilcher
Build a life of love, purpose, adventure & boundless creativity!