One of the greatest hindrances of living your life well is the tendency to listen to crowd noise. The critics, the fearful, the rigid, and it goes on and on. Learning can certainly come from crowd noise, but it's best not to linger there for very long.
I see a disturbing trend where I live. The world is shaping up to need artists and many are acting as if it is calling for redundant task work. Prepping to understand what your art is can be difficult because its supposed to be. The riddle is summed up in not only finding your art, it's also the input that goes into making it.
The connection between the life well lived and our unique art is inseparable.