Carly's Ramblings Blog - Style

Fear and Creativity

Blog City - Day 1658

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Prompt: Sources say that our brains are hard-wired to fear creativity, and vice versa, creativity thrives on what the brain fears most. What do you think? Can this be true for you?

Interesting concept. I have been reading several books about creativity and resistance. Steven Pressfield's The War of Art and Deb Norton/s Part Wild. Both look at how we resist the creative process and tend to meet with resistance when we are getting close to an something that matters to us. The War of Art talks about how whenever we get close to something that needs working on we meet with resistance. Norton's approach in Part Wild is to use that creative resistance and make it work for us. Both books make a lot of sense to me.

Resistance is the embodiment of fear. Plain and simple. We can be the most creative when we enter into the realm of resistance and see what it wants us to hide from... in doing so we come to a place that needs our time and attention.

Norton says "Terror and exhilaration are the flip sides of the same emotion - they both light up your nervous system to let you know something significant is happening." Whenever we hit fear or resistance we know there is good information there. She goes on to say, and I found this echoed in Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic, that "Because it cues our creativity... creativity is stronger than fear." You just need to be brave enough to access it.

I was listening to something on Facebook yesterday and the woman talked about how we are like Little Red Riding Hood. Doing what is expected and running into difficulty if we go of the path.... but that limits us and it limits our ability to be creative as well. She said we must stop seeing ourselves at the sweet little red riding hood and be the wolf.... take that fear by the guts and see what we can make of it. This might be a stretch, but the woman giving the speak was quite eloquent. If I can find the link I will add it here....



I say we step up and face the fear. Enter into it and see that it really nothing more than a smoke screen trying to block our creative endeavours. Go for it! Press on and find the magic!