We have a responsibility to do our job, to create, and to fight to always stay creative!
As much as creative people hate routine there is a cycle or routine that we all risk falling into in our lives. I know this to be true from my personal life as well as from watching countless friends who are artists or innovators that fall into the same cycle. This dangerous cycle is usually hidden but frighteningly common in the lives of anyone who creates anything.
We all know the fear of the blank slate. The curse pulses on our screen, the vastness of the empty page intimidates us. Then something magical happens and we get an idea. At some point the idea is more powerful than the fear and we make something…and it is awesome.
Our awesome thing becomes successful! That success tempts us to stop innovating. This is what people want or this is what works so why would we do something new or different. Rather than continue being a creator we try to figure our why there is success around this idea.
We then move from acknowledging the success of our idea and going back to work creating the next thing that could be successful to managing the success we have. Fear also tries to sneak into this space, to keep us from making more great stuff, and whispers to us that this idea is the best one we will ever have and that we can’t do better. We become so consumed with maintaining this success so that we remain “on top”, liked, praised, etc. The problem is when creative people move from being creating to being managing it rarely keeps them engaged. It takes a special person to make stuff and an equally special person to manage stuff.
After a season of managing success the heartbeat of the creative person begins to fade. Further over time the success of the original idea fades as well. One day we wake up and realize we are in “survival mode”. We are doing whatever we can to just maintain. Survival mode is scary, scrappy, and uncomfortable. The creative person feels lost, desperate, disconnected, and alone. The self-realization sets in that for a period of team the creator has stopped creating and has lost the essence of whom they are and what they were created to do in the first place. There is one good thing about the survival stage of the cycle; it usually gets so uncomfortable that the creative person is compelled to create again. The success has faded and we get back to being who we are and doing what we do…creating the next thing.
Part of the process of being our best as a creative person is fighting to stay in a posture of innovation. We have a responsibility to fight to stay creative. We must learn to ignore the intoxication and temptation to believe in your own success. We have to be confident enough in who we are and what we do to empower others who are talented to manage so we can stay in a posture of creativity and finally, when we do find ourselves in a state of survival we have to be brave enough to start over and create again.
Where do you find yourself today?
