Forget Ambition: A Case for Hopeless Creativity

This is Bryan Cranston in an ad for hemorrhoid cream. And this is him 15 years on working a guest spot on The X-Files. Still an unknown actor, but at least he's not selling hemorrhoid cream. But 1 year after this, he lands the role of Hal in Malcolm in the Middle. And from there,

well, you know the rest. You hear all these stories where an artist works for decades before finding success. And you end up wondering, how? How did they find that faith and that discipline to stick it out all those years? >> If you think that standing up on that stage and hearing 10,000 people

screaming for you is going to make you happy, you are dead wrong. >> You're 100% You're 100% right. >> This is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia creator Rob McElhenney talking about the success he found as co-owner of Wrexham Football Club. After celebrating their historic promotion in a small town in northeast Wales, [music]

he has to fly back home. >> I came home and um and there was [music] nobody home cuz the kids didn't have gone out and I had all this laundry and I realized like, oh, I got to do the laundry cuz I'm not going to have clothes. So, >> We're often fed this idea that happiness

only comes after you've obtained a certain amount of success. This is the arrival fallacy. The idea that emotions can be obtained once and then held on to forever. But human emotions are just signals your brain uses to encourage certain behaviors. When you achieve something, you get a hit of dopamine that could last minutes, or it could

last weeks. But eventually, your emotions return to that baseline level. So, those euphoric moments of success and adoration can only ever be just that, moments. Eventually, you just [music] have to come home and do your laundry. So, what does this have to do with making art? Well, you have to let go of