With Christmas behind us, we enter the no mans land of winter - that strange week between Christmas and New Year when we lose track of what day it is and the days merge in to one. As we eat leftovers and approach the end of the year, our thoughts turn to what we achieved this year and what we want to do next year.
Each year is filled with so much promise isn't it? We tell ourselves we are going to carve out more 'me time', we will be more creative, we will create new habits but in reality, after a few weeks, we let life take over once again.
This year, we discovered though that this is not something we do just in the New Year. After reaching out to customers from around the world, we heard stories of how excited they were to buy their Beginners Masterclass, how happy they were to do something they had always dreamed of but now their Masterclass lay unopened and their painting supplies left neglected.
How do you overcome all those obstacles though that are preventing you from doing something you truly want to? There is no one magic answer but one of the things we have built in to our Progress Not Perfection course is accountability. By encouraging our students to pair up with a painting buddy and asking them to complete weekly assignments, they were responsible for working their way through the masterclass, they had obligations to meet their milestones.
They were no longer left alone to meander their way through the lessons. The course meant that there were other people relying on them to complete the lessons. Suddenly, they were excited to complete each lesson, often going beyond the lesson assigned for that week or painting new designs based on their own ideas. Suddenly having that accountability helped them to carve out a small window of time just for themselves.
Alongside accountability, our mentorship and the community offers support and encouragement. It helps the students identify what is stopping them from succeeding and gives them tools to help them overcome the barriers.
If you can identify with our students and you would love to learn to paint but find it hard to know where to start or how to stay motivated, why not join our next Progress not Perfection course starting in January? You can find out even more about it here.
Scroll down to find out what our past and present students think of the mentorship program.
