Three Revolutionary Ways To Overcome Creative Resistance And Boost Your Success At Work & Life
If you feel like the odd one out, but feel scared to move forward this is for you.
I should warn you. After you read this article you will be able to move past resistance and boost your creativity. Not by exercising your creativity but just understanding what holds you back will shift your perspective in a major way.
Let’s dive into the subject right away, because I have been wanting to write about this forever and I have been holding back because it just did not seem to be the thing everybody else was doing. Maybe this will even make you think about all the things you do not do because you feel resistance or even fear.
Resistance plays hardball
Most people feel resistance when they want to turn their creativity on.
It may start as a slight “pang” in your stomach or will make you feel disengaged. The next thing that happens is that they move away from their creativity and the feeling will subside.
But what truly happened here is they are held back, they fear, they shrink, they start playing small, they don’t dare to be their creative self.
This will make your life less happy, less interesting to say the least, more frustrating and will not lead you to a successful life or work.
This resistance could happen any time but these actions seem to be the triggers:
Starting a new project.
Starting to speak up at work.
Starting to share your ideas.
Starting to bring creativity back to your life.
Starting to step into the unknown.
or many more activities that could set your creativity alarm.
And as you may see it all has to do with starting…..
Starting to do anything is moving away from something into a new something. You leave a ceratin fixed and safe situation and step into a new situation.
Old-New.
Safe-Uncertain.
Known-Unknown.
On all levels in your work and life, there will be moments that creativity will fade away. In an instant or slowly but surely.
I am sure you have experienced one or two moments this past week that fit the bill. It happens to me all the time. And that is fine because I know what to do.
Whenever I start something or get a new idea, and this happens to me very often: I feel resistance. But I also know how to flip this resistance and move past it. Without being hard on myself or having to bite through some serious bullets. I am no different from you. Nor am I capable of doing very hard things.
……I made some room for your thoughts
Before you give a remark, I want to make it very clear, everybody is creative. To state the obvious here but it must be said. I believe all people are creative. This is not just me stating this fact. Most of the research done about creativity is clear about this. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi a famous researcher of creativity and flow, made it very clear that we are all blessed with this gift. We are born with our creativity. We can choose to use it or not. The less we use it, the lower our creative activity.
But this does not mean you have less creativity.
You just use it less frequently than others.
You must understand this is a different approach.
What most people miss
Creativity is a given. It is up to us how we use it. How much of it we use and how often we use it. This simple fact is often very overlooked.
This is important because many of us are stuck in an uncreative situation in life and work, while we would love to be more creative. Creativity would give us more freedom, recognition and success. We would love to connect more with our creativity but it seems: we have lost it. Or so most of us believe.
Let’s take a look back in history, your history, because most of the time here lies the root of our problem. And I will not make a long list but there are a few things that stand out:
Our school system is not designed to teach children to think for themselves. The system is set up to create children who are following, easy to lead and learn about the common rules and regulations.
Then there are our parents and friends who could be holding our creativity back without even knowing or wanting to. A simple but deadly remark about a creative endeavour can stop us completely from being creative.
I remember when I was younger, many people made remarks about my ideas, my clothes or the way I thought: I was different, my ideas were different… and they always had this funny look in their eyes when they said the word differently. Not sure what it was but it looked like they became ill instantly and I knew they thought I was an odd one.
But I loved this… It is funny but true this had a great effect on my and my ability to grow my creativity. It made me more persistent, more creative and more daring.
Having discovered that my ideas had this effect on people, I tried my best to make sure every idea I had, got this remark. “Oh, how different!” I even tried to predict that I would get the remark… I made it a game. My game.
Unknowingly I created a powerful method to overcome the fear of being creative due to those remarks.
Our creativity is connected to how we feel.
When we have received nasty remarks we are more likely to hide our creativity and keep it to ourselves. When we have received critique we are less likely to ever show our creativity or share insight and ideas in public.
We have been hurt, but most of us don’t even realize this. Our creativity is very sensitive and when it has been hurt, it likes to hide. The more often it gets hurt the less we are inclined to show, share or be creative.
In any life, that means your and mine alike this happens. To most people, this means that they will hide their creativity from that moment on.
Right now when the world is changing fast and it is rather obvious the old ways of doing things are not the best way anymore, we need creative people more than ever. Our society and the education system worked so hard to reduce our creativity, getting it back is not that easy.
The current trend is to get people into creative training programs and let them play, fill out models, charts and discover new ways of doing things. When most people leave the training, they will not have gained the ability to use their creativity they have just learned how to fill in the model. It’s not bringing back your creativity it is just learning you how to fill out the model and to make it even worse, there is a side effect.
You are not fulfilling your creative potential.
All looks fine when they are together during the training and brainstorming about a subject. Once the same people are back in the office, at work, in their team or creative task force, those creative ideas seem to disappear like snow on a sunny day.
Resistance kick in with a major force and nobody seems to notice. “The ideas do not fit, after all”. “ The ideas are too expensive, to different or standing out to much.”
A very professional way of saying: “We are not doing these seemingly new and uncertain things because we have no real proof this will work and I am not sure what other people, like my boss, will think of this, so better not make this one stand out. It just doesn’t feel right.
What happens next is that they will take a step back and whip out the old ideas, the old plans, and the old way of doing things since it feels better, more secure and did the trick before. As if to say let’s not make things too complicated.
Creativity is not stupid. You cannot fool creativity.
Creativity will not crawl back into your life when you fill out a model. Creativity is not something you can turn on without having to work for it.
If you are truly wanting to reconnect with your creativity and let it flow here are 3 ways to do this.
How to re-connect with your creativity
1. Get in touch with the way you feel about your creativity
If you, right now, stopped reading… please read on because this means you need this.
Creativity is connected with your feelings, this means that if you feel insecure you will not be able to speak up with your creative ideas.
Somehow you lost the ability to be creative because of something that happened to you or for you. It might be in your childhood or later in life. But something triggered your resistance. Once it is triggered you will feel certain insecurity.
This trigger may have been just once or many times, this does not matter. Even when it has just been once, you have been told that your work looks ridiculous. A long time ago I was doing creative activity in a class full of children of the age of 6 or 7. They had fun creating all kinds of fruit, making them into felt hangers. I never made pre-designed shapes or tell the children how they should finish their work. That is factory work, not creativity.
Creativity means you can decide for yourself, how you will solve your problem or creative task.
while I was helping out, another teacher found her way to the desk of a boy who was very busy making his banana bright purple. He was having fun doing so, but the teacher told him off. “ You should not do that, a banana should be yellow,” She told him. I was truly upset about her remark and stepped up to talk to her about this. How could she think this was a good way to help them develop their creativity?
She apologized and said she had no idea. No idea that this was harmful, this was undermining the boy ability to follow his creativity.
Maybe something happened to you too. Maybe you have been told off, about an idea, you thought was amazing. About something you loved, and afterwards, you were deeply hurt.
Most remarks, criticism or anything that resembles putting down is born out of uncertainty, of not knowing how to deal with new ideas. The people who make these remarks are often hurt themselves and want to keep you from being hurt too. Or they base their beliefs of putting down creativity on the simple fact that the old ways of doing are fine and need not change. I will write another story about those specific people who are afraid to change the status quo and why they are inclined to do so.
So my question is how do you feel about your creativity? Has anything triggered your feelings here?
2. Your inner voice.
Now that you have re-connected with how you feel about your creativity, it is time you started listening to your inner voice. Because your inner voice, the voice of your ego, is where the collection of all your insecurities, all your doubts, all your ‘should do’s and all of your resistance is achieved. Your inner voice has collected all your feelings about your creativity and will feed you fitting excuses the moment you start talking or thinking about being creative. This is the resistance, the fear that holds you back.
Maybe you have never taken the time to listen to the voice. But it’s there and it trying to hold you back from creating, being creative or anything that will make you different.
It’s the voice that is trained to keep you safe, keep you from hurting yourself. When you have been hurt before by critique or worse, as I talked about, this inner voice will become active. Your inner voice is like an elephant it has a huge memory and will not forget not even the smallest simplest remark that was made about your creativity. It will be remembered and can harm your creative abilities.
3. Learn to say thank you
The easiest way to stop feeling the resistance coming from your inner voice is very simple and also highly effective.
Just learn to say: “thank you, I am fine”.
Your inner voice, your ego, is trying to help you, so whenever someone helps you, you thank them for their kindness: you are okay.
You have to tell your inner voice that you are okay. Nobody else will do that for you and your inner voice will not know that you are okay unless you tell it to her.
Tell her that you are not in any way hurt, will be killed or in harm’s way if you pursue this creative activity, whatever this may be.
If you try skiing on a slope that is just covered in new fresh snow and has avalanche signs all over the place, yes you might be in danger and should listen to your inner voice. But most of the time (99,9 %) we are not in danger. We just need to share our ideas, speak up at meetings, make the creative work we want to make or build the projects we think are great solutions for existing problems.
Be prepared to do this every time you feel the resistance.
- You feel something.
2. You hear something.
3. Act on it!
Maurille
