Do you avoid creating because it feels self-indulgent, even selfish? Here are 8 reasons — including SCIENTIFIC ones — why it’s not self-indulgent, but absolutely essential for you to feed your creative hungers. [Read more…]
Ah, perfectionist paralysis — I know it well. It’s that belief that nothing I create is, or ever could be, good enough.
It’s what kept me NOT creating for decades.
And it’s epidemic!
If you’ve ever found yourself NOT creating, mired in resistance because your gremlins have convinced you that your writing/art/music/macaroni sculptures just weren’t good enough, this is for YOU. Read on…
Do you have a favorite musician, or writer or artist? Someone whose work touches you deeply, who moves and inspires you?
Maybe someone whose work got you through a tough time.
Or compelled you to think in a new way.
Or makes you smile as you pass it in the hall every day.
Or just jazzes you up when you need a little jazzing.
Now, let me ask you, how would your life be different – be lacking – without their creative contribution? [Read more…]
I pulled out a baseball bat and smashed some glass just the other day.
Metaphorically speaking, that is.
See, it seems I have a never-ending supply of false stories that I believe in.
I call them self-installed glass ceilings.
Glass ceilings, because they limit not just what I can do, but what I believe I can do. Self-installed, because ultimately I am the one who subscribes to these stories — I’m the one holding myself back.
And ultimately I am the only one who can bust the glass ceilings, too.
Want some examples?
I don’t have the moneymaking gene — other people can make money, but not me.
Creativity is reserved only for the special few, not for regular folks like me.
Writing is hard, I’m not good at it, and that means I should quit.
I’ve bought into each one of the false stories above — and a lot more, too — keeping myself hunched over, playing the victim. Those self-installed glass ceilings kept me from moving forward, and provided a very convenient excuse, too!
Here are some others:
I need big chunks of time to do my creative thing; I can’t possibly get anything worthwhile accomplished in less than three hours.
My studio will always be a horrendous cluttercave; I’m incapable of creating a spacious, low-clutter work space.
I can’t sing.
Yep, I’ve believed fiercely in each of the above, too. All lies — glass ceilings that I’ve installed over my own head. Thankfully, though, I shattered them all, proved each one of them false, once I realized what they were.
The great thing about shattering self-installed glass ceilings is that just realizing that one is there does a good deal of the work for you.
Simply accepting that a story is a lie sends a network of cracks running through the glass, making it much easier to dismantle.
The tricky thing is that self-installed glass ceilings are hard to see, being transparent.
If you believe, for example, that creativity is reserved only for the few, not for regular folks like you and me, well, it feels like The Truth, doesn’t it? It’s hard to recognize it for what it is: a story, a belief, a self-installed glass ceiling.
But once you’ve recognized one self-installed glass ceiling in your life, you start to become better at noticing others.
Or, at least, let’s just say you’re maybe more aware that they might be there. Glass is still transparent, after all.
Every time I find a new self-installed glass ceiling, I get a little jolt of glee (along with a hefty dose of embarrassment. “Really? I believed that?“)
Just the other day I found another glass ceiling. I’ve been shopping around for a looper — a device to allow me to record and layer audio “loops” of my voice and my ukulele (or any other sound, really), in order to compose and improvise new songs.
This is pretty silly, but the truth is, I got stuck on this false story that I needed a particular kind of looper in order to get started. Since my ultimate goal is to be able to perform onstage, and even improvise live with a looper, I thought I needed on of these or one of these.
So I spent a lot of time reading reviews, researching which looper is better for what I want to do, thinking about where I wanted to put my hard-earned money.
Meanwhile (this is the really embarrassing part), a number of people had told me that there are very inexpensive apps (including free) that allow you to loop on your iPhone, but that info went in one ear and out the other.
No, I thought, I had to wait until I had the perfect tool.
This is sort of like saying you can’t possibly write unless you have the perfect fountain pen and 100% rag paper; or until you have a MacBook Air and an antique roll-top desk.
Hogwash. Just pick up whatever tool is around and start writing.
It’s like saying you can’t make art until you have a complete set of the best oil paints, an expensive easel, and a full set of natural bristle brushes, in a studio with North light, overlooking the ocean.
Nonsense. Grab a paper napkin and a ball point pen and draw, dammit!
The conditions do not have to be perfect in order to start! They just have to be good enough. And you just have to start.
Thankfully, in all of the time I spent researching (time, I will note, that I could have spent looping), I was reminded that, hey, there are inexpensive apps for that!
So I downloaded a few to my phone and got started.
Bam! Self-installed glass ceiling shattered!
I’ve been looping almost every day ever since, “making messes in the Creative Sandbox” and having a blast.
Here’s today’s experiment:
Do my looping apps let me do everything I need? No, I’ll need some additional equipment in order to perform live, but in the meantime, I’m starting to build up some skills and figure out how this looping thing works, which I’d have to do before I could roll it out in a live performance anyway.
But in the meantime, instead of spending two or three more years stalling, I’m looping. (If you want to hear more of what I’ve been up to, in the spirit of embracing imperfectionism [egad — all I can hear is the places I’m out of pitch!], I’ve been sharing my experiments — you can find them here on the blog, or you can follow me over on SoundCloud.)
Here’s to shattering self-installed glass ceilings! I hope this inspires you to grab a metaphorical baseball bat and smash some of your own.
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
Back in October I did something rather rash. I committed myself to a 365-day challenge: fill a 3×5 index card to a one-word prompt every day, and post it here on my website.
Why? Several reasons:
Despite the tininess of the daily goal (filling a 3×5 card is pretty minimal, after all), I confess I have been tempted to quit on multiple occasions.
Doing this every day for a full year has proven to be more challenging than I ever expected. But then, that’s why they call it a challenge, I guess.
When I decided to take on this project, I had fantasized that several months into it I’d magically transform into the poet I always wished to be, and sadly, that has not happened. Sometimes it has felt utterly pointless to write yet one more mediocre, utterly pointless 3×5 card.
But then I’d have a day when a sentence, or a phrase, or even an entire card, would tickle me, and it would all seem worth it again.
That’s the power of commitment and persistence.
Other times I resented having to take the time to photograph the 3×5 card, email it to myself, post it to my blog, and send out yet another 3x5x365 newsletter. The whole process doesn’t take that very long, but it’s time I could use to do something else.
But then someone would email me to say how much that day’s 3×5 meant to them, and it would all seem worth it again.
That’s the power of community and accountability.
Even if nobody had emailed, though, and even if none of the cards delighted me in the least, I’m glad I’ve persisted.
Not only have I proven to myself that yes, I can sustain a daily practice, but I have to admit that this funny little project really has done a lot to desensitize me to the terror of sharing stuff that isn’t perfect.
Seriously, this crazy endeavor would be worth it for those two things alone. But it’s proven to be richer than that.
First off, check out that stack of 3x5s in the photo above. Impressive, no? Each one alone may be trite, mediocre, dinky, unremarkable. Taken together, though, they form a much larger work—one that couldn’t exist without the mass of all of them.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
I’m toying with the idea of using the complete set of 365 3x5s to wallpaper my downstairs powder room. A single 3×5 glued to a wall is one thing; a wall covered with 3x5s is another thing entirely.
Whatever I end up doing with the final stack, though, without committing to this tiny-but-daily year-long project, I would not have this whole.
Second off, sticking with my commitment has led me places I would never have gone otherwise.
I’m on Day 315 now, but back on Day 303, utterly bored with what I’d been doing for the previous 302 days, I decided to try something new: instead of writing with my voice, about my life and my thoughts, I wrote fiction.
Not an entire story, mind you—just a story start—but fiction.
The first fiction I’ve written in twenty years, in fact; my first fiction since 1994, when I declared myself a crappy writer, and gave up writing altogether.
Suddenly, what had felt boring and stilted felt fun and exciting. The quality of my writing didn’t miraculously improve, but my enjoyment did, and that made me happy.
This is, ultimately, the most important reason to create of all: because it makes us happy to do so.
I have no idea where these story starts will lead, if anywhere. All I know is that I may never have re-discovered an interest in writing fiction had I not started this project.
And all I know is that it took 302 days, and digging myself into the boredom of a deep rut, for me to finally start looking around for a way out that didn’t involve quitting.
If I hadn’t been committed to keep at this for an entire year, the most obvious way out would have been to quit, oh, at least a hundred days ago. Maybe two hundred days ago. And I suspect I would have taken that exit route.
The reality is, if I hadn’t made a public commitment, and held myself accountable by posting here on my website, and sending out a daily newsletter, I doubt I’d be trying my hand at fiction again right now.
Commitment. Accountability. Community.
Over and over again these have proven to be invaluable tools in maintaining a consistent, sustainable, nourishing creative practice. So over and over again I return to them.
Onward, ho!
(And oh, I may ask you to slap me if I start talking about taking on another year-long challenge…. ;))
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
If you’ve been wanting a consistent, sustainable, nourishing creative practice, but haven’t been able to make it happen for yourself, stay tuned! Next week I’ll be opening up registration for my 30-day program, Get Sparked, designed to get you creating every day (even just a little), and to help you find joy in the nooks and crannies of your life. Registration will be limited, so sign up on my mailing list in the form below if you want first dibs.
