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Pottery Perfection through Gamer's Grit
43 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Nic Torres encourages potters to adopt a competitive gaming mindset to elevate their craft. Drawing on his personal experiences of sibling rivalry and competitive sports, he suggests treating pottery like a game can lead to growth, creativity, and a deeper enjoyment of the process. By framing challenges as mini-bosses and failures as learning opportunities, potters can push their boundaries and experiment with new techniques. Nic shares anecdotes of how this approach has helped him overcome fear and achieve a sense of accomplishment in pottery, akin to the triumph of defeating a tough video game boss. He advocates for experimentation and finding one's unique voice through embracing a playful, competitive spirit in the art of pottery.
Get your 53 themes by clicking this link shapingyourpottery.com/53themes
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Transcript
Introduction to Pottery as a Game
00:00:00
Speaker
What happens if you treat pottery like a game? What is up, shaping nation? This is Nick Torres here. And on this episode, I'm going to be talking about why you should be treating pottery like a game and also the benefits to treating pottery like a game.
00:00:14
Speaker
So I don't know about you, but I am an extremely competitive person. I grew up with three brothers, older brothers, and we all were very competitive with each other. And while it took me a little bit to get to that point of being competitive, mainly because my skills, my hand-eye coordination just didn't really catch up to me in time, it took a long time for that to develop, I should say.
Competitive Spirit in Pottery
00:00:38
Speaker
But once that developed, I was very competitive with my brothers, even while playing like board games like Monopoly or like something other like Mario Kart. I'm very competitive and being able to play these games actually makes it that much more enjoyable to me. And not only that, I also get I feel like I get better when I'm facing stronger competition and doing stronger games.
Creative Growth through Gaming
00:01:06
Speaker
And what if you did the same thing in pottery? You treated it like a game. So let's say you are working on something right now and you've been doing it for maybe the last year. You've been doing the same thing pretty much for the last year. And now you're ready to start branching out a little bit. We're a little bit scared to do it because people are starting to know you for this body of work.
00:01:30
Speaker
and they're starting to know you and you know you're making sales but you're getting a little scared that's okay it's okay to get scared but what if you treated it like a game so let's say now you've been making this party for like a year and now you're ready to branch off what if instead of trying to you know completely change the whole thing up we made like a game you made every
00:01:53
Speaker
few pots or so like every five pots you change something completely up and then you post it to the world and then if you don't get the results you want then that's just another step in the right direction right like when you're playing a video game you will be facing up like a like a mini boss and when you're facing that mini boss you're probably gonna lose a couple times like you depending on how like where you're at in the video game and
Learning from Failures
00:02:20
Speaker
The more you lose, the more you want to go out there and try to beat him. The more you start learning the patterns, start learning the patterns, you start, you know, getting more confident in your ability is to beat that damn boss. And when you beat that boss, what happens is you feel so relieved. You're like, fuck yeah, let's go. I beat him.
00:02:40
Speaker
I don't know about you, but I've definitely felt that while playing video games or even like while like playing sports. And the same thing applies for a pottery. You know, if you were trying to experiment with something and you keep failing and failing and failing, the more you treat it like a game, it's like, OK, this is one step. This is one failure in the right direction. This is where it's going to help me go. And then once you finally are able to get that that piece to look just how you wanted it in your brain, everything just so much pressure comes off and it feels so great.
00:03:11
Speaker
But that doesn't happen if you just worry about everything and you try to, you're only staying in the same spot. If you treat pottery like a game, then you can do more experiments all at once while having more fun with your pottery and also evolving your pottery even further and finding your voice.
Exploring Pottery Themes
00:03:27
Speaker
Hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I'll see you guys in the next one.
00:03:31
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this episode of Shaping Your Pottery. If you are struggling with finding your own theme for your pottery so that, you know, you are known for something, I put together 53 themes that you can use and you can take. All you have to do is go to shapingyourpottery.com or slash 53 themes. That's five three themes to get these 53 themes.
00:03:58
Speaker
It's really important for you to find a theme for your pottery so that you're not going to get burnt out. You can have multiple styles with your pottery and you can be known for something. So again, go to shapingyourpottery.com forward slash 53 themes. That's five three themes to get these 53 themes. Thanks, guys. I'll see you guys next time.