Why Most People Quit Creative Work (And Why You Don’t Have To)

Most people don’t quit creative work because they lack talent.
They quit because no one warned them about how the learning process feels.

If you don’t know what to expect, the discomfort can feel like a sign that something has gone wrong. Like maybe you’re not cut out for this after all.

But usually, nothing has gone wrong.

You’re just learning.

The Emotional Cycle of Learning

When we start something new—art, healing, rebuilding a life after leaving a high-demand religion, starting a business, or learning how to trust ourselves again—there’s a predictable emotional cycle we move through.

Understanding this cycle matters because when things start to feel hard, many of us interpret that as a sign to stop.

This framework is often called the Four Stages of Learning, or the Emotional Cycle of Change, and it’s attributed to Martin Broadwell. It describes how people move from not knowing what they don’t know to being able to perform skills with relative ease.

The four stages are:

1. Uninformed Optimism

2. Informed Pessimism (often called the Valley of Despair)

3. Informed Optimism

4. Integration / Mastery

Let’s walk through them.

Stage 1: Uninformed Optimism

(The Honeymoon Phase)

This is where everything begins.

You don’t yet know what you don’t know.
You feel inspired, energized, hopeful.
You think, This is exciting. I’m finally doing the thing.

This stage is a gift.

If we could see the entire road clearly at the beginning—every frustration, every failure, every moment of self-doubt—most of us would never take the first step.

When I first started painting, I was full of uninformed optimism.

In my first oil painting class, we began with something called a wipe-out painting. You cover the entire canvas with a wash of paint, then—rather than adding—you wipe paint away with a rag. Light appears through subtraction.

It’s often used as an underpainting to quickly establish basic values and forms. Our assignment was simple: paint a sphere using this subtractive technique. Establish the values that make it look round.

And honestly? I did pretty well.

It looked round. It had light. It made sense. I enjoyed doing it. I remember feeling proud and thinking, Oil paints are really fun. This class might not even be that hard.

That was uninformed optimism.

Not because I was arrogant—but because I hadn’t yet encountered the parts of the process that would challenge me.

And that’s exactly what this stage is for. It gives you the courage to begin.

I see this same stage when I think about leaving the church.

At first, there was relief. Clarity. A sense of finally breathing. I thought, This is painful, but I’m free now. Healing will mostly be uphill from here.

I didn’t yet know about grief. Or nervous system recalibration. Or how deep identity loss goes.

That was uninformed optimism too.

And it wasn’t wrong.

It was merciful.

Stage 2: Informed Pessimism

(The Valley of Despair)

This is where things get uncomfortable.

You start doing the work and realize: Oh… this is way harder than I thought.

In painting, we moved beyond simple forms. We worked on proportion, subtle value shifts, color theory. We moved from black-and-white to color. I had mixed results. Some days felt okay. Other days, nothing worked.

My professor would demonstrate and make it look effortless. Then I’d try—and my work looked flat, muddy, overworked. I left class many times feeling frustrated and embarrassed.

This is uninformed optimism turning into informed pessimism.

This stage hurts because it comes with information. You can see what you want to be able to do. You can see what’s missing. You can see other people getting it faster than you.

And now there’s nowhere to hide.

For those of us raised in Mormonism or other high-demand systems, this stage can feel especially brutal. We were taught that obedience and effort should produce predictable results. We learned to present competence and righteousness in public—and to hide struggle.

Now I was failing in public. Doing the work. Showing up. And not getting the results I expected.

This is the stage where most people quit—not because they can’t do it, but because no one told them this stage was normal.

When self-doubt shows up here, it’s convincing:

• Other people learn faster than you.

• This just isn’t your thing.

• People are judging you.

• You’re uniquely flawed.

That last one is my brain’s favorite.

Your nervous system thinks it’s protecting you. It doesn’t realize that emotional discomfort won’t kill you—it just feels like it might.

When people believe, “If this was meant for me, it would be easier,” they interpret difficulty as disqualification.

That belief—not the difficulty—is what causes people to quit.

The work here is to keep going. To walk through the valley of despair without turning back. To put the doubt and frustration in your backpack and carry it with you.

That backpack feels heavy. But it’s making you stronger. You’re building the muscles required for this work.

Stage 3: Informed Optimism

(The Turning Point)

This is where something shifts.

You’re still struggling—but now you can see progress.
You understand what’s required—and you trust yourself to keep going.

The backpack is still heavy, but you’ve proven you can hike with it.

As my art teacher used to say, “You’re practicing, not performing.” This stage is less flashy. More steady. It’s the reps in the gym. The bad paintings. The screechy violin practice.

This is where real confidence begins.

You stop asking, “Am I good at this?”
And start asking, “Am I willing to keep showing up?”

One thought that helped me immensely here was this:
This is going to take five years.

That might sound discouraging—but for me, it was freeing.

If I know I can’t rush the timeline, then my only job is to make a lot of imperfect work. Hundreds of bad paintings. So when one doesn’t turn out the way I hoped, it’s not a failure—it’s just another box checked.

Informed optimism isn’t confidence in the outcome.
It’s confidence in your capacity to stay with discomfort.

And for women leaving high-demand systems, this is deeply healing.

We were taught that certainty equals safety. Uncertainty felt like danger. Informed optimism teaches something radical: doubt does not mean danger. You don’t need permission. You can learn as you go.

Uninformed optimism says, “This will be easy.”
Informed optimism says, “This will be hard—and I can handle that.”

Stage 4: Integration / Mastery

(Staying)

Eventually, the skill becomes embodied. You don’t have to think through every step. You respond rather than react. This isn’t perfection—it’s familiarity.

And mastery doesn’t feel the way we imagine it will.

It’s not arrival. It’s not certainty. It’s integration.

You still struggle. You still make mistakes. But you know how to stay with the process without panicking.

In creative work, mastery looks like consistency. Tolerance for imperfection. The ability to recognize when something isn’t working without collapsing.

I don’t feel mastered in painting. But I do feel integrated in the practice.

There’s a quote by artist Corita Kent that I love:

“The only rule is work. If you work, it will lead to something.”

Artist, musician, dancer—these aren’t titles you earn once you feel good enough. They describe people in relationship with a practice. People who return.

Maybe mastery isn’t when something feels easy.
Maybe it’s when you stop needing it to.

Final Thoughts

Understanding these stages doesn’t remove the discomfort—but it changes what the discomfort means.

Feeling like you can’t do it doesn’t mean something has gone wrong. It usually means you’re right on time.

Uninformed optimism gets us started.
Informed pessimism humbles us.
Informed optimism teaches us how to stay.

And integration isn’t arrival—it’s devotion.

Choosing to return to the work.
To the practice.
To the questions that keep unfolding.

And maybe that’s enough.

Want Support While You’re in the Middle of the Process?

If you’re in the informed pessimism or informed optimism stage—where things feel uncomfortable, uncertain, or messy—you don’t have to push through it alone.

I created a set of free therapeutic art prompts designed to help calm your nervous system, reconnect you to your body, and support you when emotions feel overwhelming—especially if you’re healing after leaving a high-demand system.

These prompts are not about making good art.
They’re about learning how to stay—with yourself, with the process, and with what’s coming up.

You can download the free art prompts here:
👉 https://www.mormontomuse.com/anxietyart 

Sometimes the most important skill isn’t confidence or certainty.
It’s learning how to keep showing up—gently, imperfectly, and on your own timeline.