The scary part of creativity is vulnerability


When I saw an old high-school friend last month, he told me about his new job in city planning and about his creative new boss. The boss loves to come with new plans and to draw them.
“I hope that you don’t expect it from me, I have no inch of creativity in me,” my friend warned him,
“my mom is creative, I can judge your drawings and give you my opinion, but don’t expect me to be creative too.”
My friend is good in realizing plans of others. That’s exactly what his new job is about.

It it possible to be a-creative? My friend thinks so, but I disagree. I’m quite sure that he’s creative too, but doesn’t dare to show.

Judging plans of others and criticizing them is easy. You hide behind the creativity of others. Many people who are blocked in their creativity become fierce critics in art. They would have loved to become a musicians, now they write reviews of others.

In order to be creative, you have to be in contact with the creative source within you. That’s scary, you can’t control the outcome. And when you play your new songs in front of others, you show them a bit of the creative source within you. Many musicians feel very vulnerable, with every new song they feel vulnerable again.

One way to deal with the vulnerability is to avoid being creative. That’s what my friend seems to do. Though I see a lot of creativity in how he puts the plans into action! Another way to deal with it is re-creating what has been done before, making a copy of older songs.  That’s creativity-light, playing safe by adding a bit of creativity to an existing song.

The bold way to deal with the vulnerability is to face it and be creative anyway. Every time again. There are some tricks to make it a bit easier: put sunglasses on, put make-up on, rehearse the song many times before playing for an audience, creating a stage-personality.

Some choose to become over-confident so others can’t hurt them, but that usually doesn’t work. You alienate others from yourself, they think that you are arrogant. You become alienated from yourself as well and in the long run you will lose the touch with your creative source.

Do you recognize the vulnerability? What’s your way to deal with it?

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