E71 Transcript
Last week we talked about belief as a filter - and how what you believe is possible shapes what you look for and what you ultimately find. And we closed with something worth returning to. Sometimes when you test a belief and the evidence says "this isn't working" - it's not confirmation that you were right about your limitations. It might be pointing somewhere else entirely. Something about where you actually belong.
This week is that idea fully developed.
Because there are two very different kinds of struggle. And most creative makers treat them exactly the same way - which means they're misreading one of them entirely. Responding to it in exactly the wrong way. Working harder at something that isn't asking for more effort. It's asking for more honesty.
One kind of struggle is hard. The other kind is wrong. And knowing which one you're dealing with changes everything about what you do next.
Every maker struggles. We all know that. It’s a part of creative life. That's not the interesting question. The interesting question is what a particular struggle is actually trying to tell you.
Because here is what most of us do when we hit persistent struggle in our work. We turn it inward. We assume it's about us - about effort, about discipline, about capability. Not trying hard enough. Not skilled enough yet. Need to push through. Need to get better at this. And then we double down. More effort, more persistence, more time spent on the thing that's draining us. Because that's what you're supposed to do with struggle, right? You push through it.
That response is sometimes exactly right. But sometimes it's exactly wrong. And applying a "push through" response to a struggle that is actually telling you something about direction - about fit, about alignment between who you are and what you're doing – that doesn't fix anything. It just makes the wrong thing harder for longer.
So this episode is about learning to ask a different question when struggle shows up. Not "why am I struggling" and not "how do I fix this." But - what is this struggle actually trying to tell me?
Those are different questions. And they lead to very different places.
So, let me start by making a distinction that I think is worth being very precise about, because it's the foundation everything else in this episode rests on.
Not all struggle is the same kind of struggle. And treating it as if it were is one of the most expensive things a creative maker can do.
There is struggle that is hard. This is the struggle of extending into something you genuinely want to develop - something that fits who you are and where you want to go, but that requires real work to get there. The difficulty is real. The frustration is real. There are days when it feels like nothing is moving. But underneath the difficulty there is a quality of connection to it. Like you're working through resistance rather than walking into a wall. Like the effort is going somewhere even when you can't quite see where yet. You're tired at the end of it but not hollow. The work is asking for something you have, even if you haven't fully developed it yet.
And then there is struggle that is wrong. This one is harder to name because from the outside - and often from the inside too - it can look identical to the first kind. You're working hard. You're putting in the time and the effort. But the struggle has a different quality underneath it. It's draining in a way that doesn't replenish. The effort feels disconnected, like you're pushing against something rather than through it. You work hard and at the end of it you don't feel tired in the good way that comes from genuine exertion. You feel depleted in a way that feels like something was taken from you rather than built.
Most creative makers have experienced both of these. The problem is that in the moment, both can feel like failure. Both produce frustration and self-doubt. Both can make you question whether you're really cut out for this.
The difference only becomes clear when you stop asking "What is wrong with me? Why am I struggling?" and start asking "what kind of struggle is this?"
Think about it this way. A textile artist who is learning to draft a pattern for the first time and finding it difficult - that is hard struggle. It's new, it's challenging, it requires sustained effort and it may produce a lot of wrong attempts before it produces a right one. The maker who struggles to learn a technical skill because it's genuinely new and hard - that's growth struggle because the struggle is asking for something that can be developed.
A creative maker who has been working in a particular direction for years and consistently finds the work joyless, draining, and disconnected from everything that energizes them - that may be something else entirely. That may just be a misalignment problem.
Same surface appearance. Very different information.
Now let me talk about why misalignment struggle gets misread so consistently. Because I don't think it's carelessness. I think it's that the dominant narrative around struggle points in one direction only.
The story we've all absorbed about struggle is almost entirely about persistence. Push through. Work harder. Get better. The struggle is the price of growth and if you're not willing to pay it you don't really want it. And that story is likely true and genuinely useful - for growth struggle. For the hard kind. The kind that can be developed.
But when applied to misalignment struggle it becomes actively harmful. It keeps a creative maker working harder at the wrong thing rather than paying attention to what the struggle is actually saying.
I want to mention someone whose work I've referenced before in this series. Mark McGuinness - who some of you will remember from earlier episodes - is a creative coach but also a poet and the author of several books that include one called ‘21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives.’ And in that book, he describes a moment from his own career that illustrates this principle exactly.
He was working in an environment where his natural way of communicating consistently fell flat. He was at a speaking engagement and is humor didn't land. His creative analogies didn't connect. He kept adjusting, kept looking for the right register, kept wondering what he was doing wrong. And at some point, he asked an audience directly - "do I seem a little odd to you?" They nodded. Humbly and Kindly.
And that was the information he needed.
It wasn’t that something was wrong with him, but that he was in the wrong place speaking to the wrong audience. The qualities that made him difficult to read in that context - the depth, the creative thinking, the willingness to go somewhere unexpected - were liabilities there. In a different context, working as a coach and a writer, those same qualities are exactly what make the work valuable. He didn't try to fix himself. He built his work around the context where his strengths are assets rather than problems.
The struggle wasn't a verdict on his ability. It was a signal about fit.
So you see where continual persistence and tenacity would be quite harmful to success if applied to a misalignment struggle.
And this is where the research is worth bringing in, because it gives this idea some real grounding. There's a well-established body of work in organizational psychology on what's called person-environment fit - the degree to which a person's natural strengths, working style, and values match the context they're operating in. And what that research shows, consistently, is that constant underperformance and depletion - even in capable, motivated, genuinely committed people - is often not an ability problem. It's a fit problem. The mismatch between who the person is and what the environment requires is producing the struggle. And trying harder doesn't fix a fit problem. It just accelerates the depletion.
That is worth contemplating for a moment if you've ever looked at your own persistent struggles and concluded that the problem must be you.
I want to tell you about my own experience with this because I think it illustrates the principle more clearly than any abstract description can.
After being downsized from the garment industry - which I've talked about in earlier episodes in this series - I took work in a completely different field. It was admirable work. Respectable industry. The kind of job that looks good on paper and that reasonable people would tell you to be grateful for. It required a steep learning curve and for my brain, it felt great at the start. Learning something new is a joy.
But I struggled in it in a way that I could not make sense of at the time.
My natural way of thinking - the deep thought, the different perspectives, the tendency to question how things were done and why - fell consistently flat. It wasn't that people were unkind. It was that the environment required something I wasn't built for. Routine. Predictability. Operational consistency. Day after day of the same tasks done the same way. And I kept assuming that the problem was me. That I needed to get better at adapting. That I needed to work harder at fitting in. That if I just pushed through long enough I would find my footing.
What I actually found was exhaustion. I would come home from work with nothing left. No energy for my own creative practice. No capacity for the kind of thinking that actually energizes me. The job was taking everything I had just to manage the mismatch - to perform in ways that didn't come naturally and to suppress the ways of thinking that did.
A strengths coach helped me see what I couldn't see from inside it. There was nothing wrong with me and nothing wrong with the work. We were simply mismatched. The qualities I had been treating as problems - the overthinking of routine tasks, the boredom with predictability, the constant need for intellectual challenge and variety - weren't weaknesses to be corrected. They were strengths in the wrong context. Deep thinking, learning new systems, solving complex problems, strategic work - these are what I'm actually good at. They're what energize me rather than deplete me. And apart from the first few months of learning a new industry - none of them were required by the job I was in.
Good job on paper. Miserable in reality. And the struggle - the persistent, draining, nothing-is-going-anywhere struggle - was the signal the whole time. I just didn't have the language to read it.
This connects directly back to what we talked about on values and on definitions of success in earlier episodes. If you know what you actually value and you've built a definition of success that genuinely reflects those values - then persistent misalignment struggle is one of the clearest signals you'll get that the direction you're working in doesn't match. The struggle is the gap made visible. It's not asking you to try harder. It's asking you to look more carefully at whether you're pointed the right way.
And it connects to last week's episode on belief. A creative maker who interprets misalignment struggle as personal failure will direct all their energy toward fixing themselves. A creative maker who reads it as information about fit will direct their energy toward finding better alignment. Same struggle. Completely different question being asked of it. Completely different place it leads.
So how do you look at this in a way that's actually useful for your work right now?
The distinction between hard and wrong is not always obvious in the moment. Struggle is uncomfortable regardless of what kind it is. But there are some questions worth bringing forward.
Does the struggle feel like you're working through something or walking into a wall? Is the effort connected to something that energizes you underneath the difficulty, or does it feel fundamentally disconnected from what you actually care about? When you imagine getting better at this - really getting good at it - does that feel like something worth working toward? Or does it feel like more of the same drain, just at a higher level?
And perhaps the most useful question: when you look at the people doing this kind of work well, in this kind of context, do you recognize something in them that you have and are developing? Or do you look at them and think - I'm not sure that's actually me?
Those questions don't always produce immediate or crystal clear answers. But they point toward the right territory. And asking them directly, rather than defaulting immediately to "I need to try harder" - is where the useful information lives.
Hard struggle asks for more effort, more patience, more time. It's the cost of developing something real and it's worth paying.
Wrong struggle asks for something different. It asks you to stop, pay attention, and take seriously the possibility that the direction itself needs looking at. Not your effort. Not your capability. The direction.
Most creative makers never ask that question because the default is always to try harder. And trying harder is a reasonable response to almost everything - except the wrong kind of struggle.
So if something keeps showing up in your creative work that drains you rather than challenges you, that depletes rather than builds, that feels like pushing against something rather than through it - don't ignore it. It's not a character flaw. It's probably not a capability problem. It might be the most useful information your work has given you in a long time.
And if you're ready to have someone help you figure out which kind of struggle you're actually dealing with - that's exactly what the Fabric and Fiber Studio is built for. Direct critique, honest assessment, a small group of serious makers doing the same hard work. The spring cohort applications open Tuesday April 22nd. The link is in the show notes.
We’ll be back here next week talking about how to have a both/and type of fabric practice. See you then.
