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The value of creative process as business work
It’s not an easy path to navigate the creative/business trajectory. But I think it’s been worth it even when sometimes the job doesn’t feel rewarding or satisfying, or feels like it’s not exactly what you’re looking for. But that’s all mindset, I’ve realized – It’s not what you’re doing, it’s bringing all of yourself to what you do. What I’ve found is this creative/business mesh is unique and needed. It’s a communication bridge between people that are all business and people that are all creative.
What I’m doing right now is rewarding, I feel challenged and it’s always something new – it’s a lot of “business” but using my creativity in a different way. But it also took time to gain that experience and sharpen my internal compass to leading groups, problem solving, design direction, buy-in.
So I guess one piece of advice would be, do what re-energizes you. Maybe something creative, design, art, writing or some physical activity. Embrace a beginner’s mindset as in learning how to make it a practice, keeping the “play” and staying re-energized to do it regularly. Build a process around getting better and better at it. Now this creative “process” that you create for yourself will be what you bring to your work. And this is what they will be paying you for, not so much what you do physically but the knowledge-base you’ve created for yourself that you can now bring to your work and team.
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Creative Bridge
It is a creative’s responsibility to express truth. The first principles of expression. Taking what’s in the ethereal into the real world, the state where creative work becomes surreal. Everything has a purpose. Everything has a problem. Everything has a story telling the journey from process to product. That story is just a theoretical until it isn’t. The art is what tells that story in a singular, visual statement. This is the visual story. Every element dutifully composing the story with color, movement and aesthetics.
Our job as a creative is to be a tuning fork, knowing what the story is and intuitively knowing how to compose it so that it will capture the hearts and imagination of the audience. Art is that expression. Art is the bridge connecting people between the theoretical and reality.
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Poor Communication
Parts of my past will just pop into my head. I remember as a young adult communicating so poorly. I remember specifically on of the problems was my thoughts would jump way ahead of where the conversation was and I would say something but no one understood what I was saying. I acted as if everyone was in my head and could see what I was thinking or maybe I was assuming everyone followed the same logic or process.
That was just one my communication problems. Whatever it was it would just be poor communication. These were usually conversations with older people or in meetings in some kind of planning or committee discussions. I wasn’t conveying my thoughts very effectively. And it would scare or sometimes embarrass me from wanting to speak aloud again.
Feeling like I had nothing useful to express or no one understood me. The ability to take what was in my head as ethereal, abstract thoughts and transform them into physical, audible sound waves that can then be interpreted by another person felt so elusive… an impossibility. I mean basically trying to translate a language I didn’t know.
So either be locked by my silence or find the key to the lock, from a pile of keys and a stack of locks. It was uncomfortable, difficult, felt impossible at times. To learn how to speak more effectively, efficiently. Learn to separate and order the thoughts in my head. Then learn how to listen as the other person, being more sensitive to how they might see or hear things. Being attentive to how they might understand things. Being more aware of their physicality, body language, expressions and even more sensitive to unseen energy. Then translating the thoughts in my head into words, with more precision and clarity. While first learning to speak aloud explanations and thought processes and then being able to connect my deeper expressions, perspectives and internal states with actual spoken words.
Resistance. Resistance from the fear. Sometimes we’re put in a place where fear is the only song playing in our head. Is it a coincidence that wherever we go, we face the same fears. Sometimes that fear is separating us from a part of ourselves, the best part of ourselves, the best part of what we can put into the world. Fear is the separation. Isolated. Alone. Facing fear. Overcoming fear. Finding fearlessness. Fearlessness is love. Love brings connectedness.
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Fear. Courage. Fearlessness.
Fear makes you unable to look.
Courage gives you strength you look at the fear.
Fearlessness is realizing there’s nothing there.
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Connected Instincts
Connection means there must also be an opposite – separation or maybe even rejection. Connection is not just a place to belong, be accepted, or have a group to be a part of. As an evolutionary instinct, connection means survival. Tribally, we needed to assimilate our survival instincts, don’t eat that fruit, listen for certain sounds in the wild, hunt, gather. Social norms to prevent misunderstandings. Individual responsibilities to support the tribe. Familial norms to grow and nurture children and propagate. Hierarchy to maintain order and function and maybe the most crucial assimilation, communication and language.
If any of these conformities were not followed it could have threatened the survival of the tribe. The assimilation is stimulated by the connection or enforced by the threat of rejection and separation. Under this scenario if anyone was castigated, alone in the wilderness trying to survive on their own, that could mean literal death.
We have since outgrown the need for primitive survival instincts. But the instinctual equivalency of separation and rejection equating death is still deep. Intellectually we can understand being rejected by any group does not mean death but instinctually we feel the knot in our stomach, the anxiety, stress, fear of doing something “wrong” that might make us feel or seen as different, rejected and separated. Even whether the group wouldn’t do that or not make you feel that way, we have an instinct to not want to potentially be rejected.
Sometimes in order to protect ourselves we resort to an opposite reaction of individualism to save us from that feeling or detriment. But is individualism the answer? I don’t think so. Individualism has its own shortfalls as well. But I think we need both, both have its strengths, we are better with a strong sense of both. We should to practice how to be good at both.
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Miracles
Seek miracles everyday. Miracles are whenever fear can become fearlessness.
Fearlessness is not courage or confidence. Courage and confidence is despite fear, masking it, overcoming it, controlling it, subduing it, managing it. The fear is still there, which means the fear is real.
Fearlessness is the absolute absence of fear. Fearlessness is invincibility.
Fearlessness is realizing fear is just a story of what we’re afraid of, potentially happening. Fearlessness is realizing even if what we are afraid of happens, most of the time is ultimately harmless and unlikely to happen. Fearlessness is realizing that what we think is going to hurt us, in actuality doesn’t hurt us, it hurts our Ego. Fearlessness is realizing the source of our Ego are our fears. Fearlessness is realizing our Ego really only protects itself from rejection.
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Creativity Generosity
Creativity is the connectedness of all of our experiences. Creativity isn’t only for “creatives”. Creativity goes beyond art, writing, music, performance. Athletes are called creative when they do something we’ve never seen before, something improvised with their body, decision-making and ability. Creativity in business when people pioneer decisions. Creativity when we fix something around the house but we had to MacGyver it.
Creativity seems like it should be creating from nothing. Making something out of thin air. Totally unique, totally imagined. But nothing can be made with nothing. Try to think of something that is completely imagined, totally unique, as in there is nothing a part of it that already exists. Is it even possible to imagine such a thing?
Creativity is how we connect all our experiences and letting that be expressed in what we do. In a way, that creativity is how we interpret and see the world.
Let’s not end creativity in a soloist endeavor. Creativity is discovering what’s to be discovered to be able to share with the rest of us. Let’s be generous with our creativity.