“Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful: Yourself.”
― Alan Alda
I love this quote by Alan Alda, because indeed it takes courage to open up to new experiences instead of insisting on repeating the old ways, and discovering ourself is one of the most beautiful experiences in the world.
But I don’t agree with “only by hard work.”
Yes, leaving our well-known comfort zone may appear like hard work, simply because it feels uncomfortable and because we have to do it again and again. But this discomfort (a form of resistance, anxiety or even seeming block which probably every creative person knows) is actually nothing more than a threshold to cross or a portal to walk through. It’s not an obstacle to expansion but a natural indicator that we ARE expanding.
Whether this expansion is going to be a constant struggle or a fun adventure depends on our mindset. As children, exploration without judgment and fear of failure was totally normal, just as was getting up again when we started to learn how to walk and fell as often as was necessary.
As we grew up, though, we discovered (or were taught by those around us) that there’s a “right” and a “wrong” way of doing things, and that it would be “better to do it the right way, or else suffer the consequence”…chopping our natural desire for growth, discovery and creation right off and down to a size manageable for “them”.
Because we trusted these “authorities”, or because we believed they knew better or were more powerful than we were, we embodied their beliefs – beliefs which they in turn had taken on from the authorities in their lives, their culture and society, and so on and on and on, going backwards thousands of years.
The challenge or threshold is in crossing the barrier of our thinking mind that tells us “uncertainty is bad” and we “have to know” and therefore works overtime in order to “make sense” and “find meaning”. When we “think about”, though, we automatically bring up ONLY past experiences and what we think we know about them, aka our beliefs…whose purpose is to keep us “safe” in our little box.
Creative activities like writing, drawing, crafting, cooking, gardening or meditation allow us to challenge and question those embodied beliefs in an enjoyable way because they link us up with our natural re-source which lives outside our so-called comfort zone.
They’re also, obviously, 100% safe to pursue, and therefore give us the opportunity to explore, sit with, and dissolve this old anxiety about “getting things right” in a non-stressful, delightful way. Allowing things to happen (rather than trying to control processes or outcomes) on this small scale has amazing effects on other areas of our lives as well: Simply by giving a voice to our inner self and our true desires we’re teaching ourselves new methods for dealing with uncertainties of any kind!
“Scary” is only how our limited mind interprets that which our inner, unlimited self knows to be liberating and abundant and joyful and totally natural: Letting go of control, and allowing our Flow to flow through us and express itself.
What is your favourite creative outlet? What allows you to sit with your discomfort of uncertainty long enough to see it washed away?
Create The World You Want 