Creativity: resistance from within
I took our kids to the new MADE space in St. Louis. It has multiple areas dedicated to Makers, Artists, Designers, and Entrepreneurs and loads of hands on activities for kids. I walked around the 7,000 sq. ft. space reading about entrepreneurs and artists who have harnessed the power of their creativity into a career or business. Many of these people found a creative seed inside their childhood, nurtured that seed, watered it, and eventually that seed led to what they would become professionally. I imagined each one of my children doing creative, exciting work as adults, and we spent hours there. Initially however, I feared that our time would be cut short. At many points Frankie ran to a station excitedly. She found materials to begin building, her first attempt tumbled, and then she became discouraged. Her brow stayed permanently furrowed. She panicked, raced to another area, and began a new project with vigorous energy. When the second attempt proved more difficult than her first idea, she was stymied. She moved through three or four different areas like this before approaching tears. I finally got down at her eye level and asked her to take a deep breath.
me: Are you feeling overwhelmed in here?
Frankie: uh-huh.
me: It's pretty loud, isn't it?
Frankie: uh-huh.
There was a summer camp in the space with us, and there was a lot of activity. I enjoy that level of noise: I feed off of the action and energy of a large group of people. Not so for an introverted Frankie girl.
me: It's hard to stick with a project, huh?
Frankie: (whining) I'm not good at it. (foot stomp) I can't do it.
She's 5 years old. There aren't many things that she's mastered in her young life, but she looked around the room and saw bigger kids achieving some level of proficiency in those activities and found herself to be lacking. This line of thinking led her to the conclusion that she didn't even want to try. I felt frustrated: I wanted to build something. I wanted to draw a picture and turn it into a button. I wanted to create a potholder from the plastic looms. I wanted to paint on the digital canvas. Prior to letting my frustration boil over, I took a deep breath and came to a stunning realization. I'm in the same place with my own creativity as she is. I'm familiar with this mindset: if it doesn't come easy, give up before you look like an idiot. She's 5, she has the excuse of being a kid. What's my excuse?
Pursuing creativity - or attempting to listen to that inner voice that wants to create - is baffling. I enjoy writing. I am infuriated by writing. I am constantly writing things in my mind: stories from my day, interactions I see between my children, musings that pass through my brain that catch my fancy. There are fictional stories and ideas stuck inside of me that I know instinctively need to be written down. Yet I feel a real resistance inside of me to write.
Recently I uncovered a book that a dear friend sent to me last year: The War of Art. The author, Steven Pressfield, identifies this very idea and personifies resistance: "Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It's a repelling force. It's negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work."
Frankie and I are both in the throes of Resistance - each with our unique context. The most important thing to do? Keep sitting down to do the work. And yet, the impulse is quite the opposite. Question that inner creative voice! Doubt yourself! Though I want to write, doubts creep in: Why do I do this? I'm no good at writing! This is a toil in vain. I internalize those doubts, and then I am overcome with crippling rationalizations of why not to do it. There are so many things to do around the house, I should get a load of laundry done first, the breakfast dishes should be clean before I write, the living room needs to be picked up, the dog needs to be walked. Why is this bathroom so dirty, didn't I just clean it? Who keeps dropping dirty socks in every room, on ever piece of furniture? or Writing doesn't bring more income to our family. What's the point of committing time to this?
When I see this resistance in my children I encourage them to push past the initial obstacle. What I see so clearly in them that I ignore in myself is that the practice of sitting down to do your work (learning an instrument, persevering at the MADE museum, or taking time to write) is less about producing a result and more about the process. For 20 years now, I've learned that I need to write. I don't always love it, many times I hate it. Yet without fail if I push through the resistance, I am calmer, centered, and more grateful on the other side. I have done my work. It's the sitting down, the pushing through that's the hardest part. Which is exactly what I said to Frankie:
me: Are you feeling overwhelmed in here?
Frankie: uh-huh.
me: It's pretty loud, isn't it?
Frankie: uh-huh.
There was a summer camp in the space with us, and there was a lot of activity. I enjoy that level of noise: I feed off of the action and energy of a large group of people. Not so for an introverted Frankie girl.
me: It's hard to stick with a project, huh?
Frankie: (whining) I'm not good at it. (foot stomp) I can't do it.
She's 5 years old. There aren't many things that she's mastered in her young life, but she looked around the room and saw bigger kids achieving some level of proficiency in those activities and found herself to be lacking. This line of thinking led her to the conclusion that she didn't even want to try. I felt frustrated: I wanted to build something. I wanted to draw a picture and turn it into a button. I wanted to create a potholder from the plastic looms. I wanted to paint on the digital canvas. Prior to letting my frustration boil over, I took a deep breath and came to a stunning realization. I'm in the same place with my own creativity as she is. I'm familiar with this mindset: if it doesn't come easy, give up before you look like an idiot. She's 5, she has the excuse of being a kid. What's my excuse?
Pursuing creativity - or attempting to listen to that inner voice that wants to create - is baffling. I enjoy writing. I am infuriated by writing. I am constantly writing things in my mind: stories from my day, interactions I see between my children, musings that pass through my brain that catch my fancy. There are fictional stories and ideas stuck inside of me that I know instinctively need to be written down. Yet I feel a real resistance inside of me to write.
Recently I uncovered a book that a dear friend sent to me last year: The War of Art. The author, Steven Pressfield, identifies this very idea and personifies resistance: "Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It's a repelling force. It's negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work."
Frankie and I are both in the throes of Resistance - each with our unique context. The most important thing to do? Keep sitting down to do the work. And yet, the impulse is quite the opposite. Question that inner creative voice! Doubt yourself! Though I want to write, doubts creep in: Why do I do this? I'm no good at writing! This is a toil in vain. I internalize those doubts, and then I am overcome with crippling rationalizations of why not to do it. There are so many things to do around the house, I should get a load of laundry done first, the breakfast dishes should be clean before I write, the living room needs to be picked up, the dog needs to be walked. Why is this bathroom so dirty, didn't I just clean it? Who keeps dropping dirty socks in every room, on ever piece of furniture? or Writing doesn't bring more income to our family. What's the point of committing time to this?
When I see this resistance in my children I encourage them to push past the initial obstacle. What I see so clearly in them that I ignore in myself is that the practice of sitting down to do your work (learning an instrument, persevering at the MADE museum, or taking time to write) is less about producing a result and more about the process. For 20 years now, I've learned that I need to write. I don't always love it, many times I hate it. Yet without fail if I push through the resistance, I am calmer, centered, and more grateful on the other side. I have done my work. It's the sitting down, the pushing through that's the hardest part. Which is exactly what I said to Frankie:
me: If you spend your time here going from station to station and saying "I can't do it" at every one, you will be left with nothing to do. You can do it. I'm here to help. I won't do it for you, but I will sit here with you.
I wish I could say that those words successfully dispelled the resistance inside of her. In fact it took many more exchanges of words, many more foot stomps from Frankie, many more doubts floating through her brain before she settled in to do her work.
The very thing I'm trying to teach my kids - the traits that I know they will need in this life - are the traits I need to call upon in my own creative pursuits: determination, persistence, tenacity, resolve. This crazy idea of writing down my thoughts, crafting them into something coherent, attempting to make them understandable and then entertaining or enjoyable to read? Ludicrous! Yet I know that my children will directly benefit from persevering through the creation of something. I don't care what the product is, I just want to see them making, creating, building, doing and becoming their true selves in the process. Isn't this why I named this blog The Art of Becoming? Because I knew then, as I do now, that I'm in a constant state of becoming. What exactly I'm becoming, I haven't the foggiest. Becoming is the goal.
The very thing I'm trying to teach my kids - the traits that I know they will need in this life - are the traits I need to call upon in my own creative pursuits: determination, persistence, tenacity, resolve. This crazy idea of writing down my thoughts, crafting them into something coherent, attempting to make them understandable and then entertaining or enjoyable to read? Ludicrous! Yet I know that my children will directly benefit from persevering through the creation of something. I don't care what the product is, I just want to see them making, creating, building, doing and becoming their true selves in the process. Isn't this why I named this blog The Art of Becoming? Because I knew then, as I do now, that I'm in a constant state of becoming. What exactly I'm becoming, I haven't the foggiest. Becoming is the goal.
My grandfather used to recite to us Rudyard Kipling's If, and watching Frankie struggle, witnessing my struggle to re-discover my own creativity lately, it reminded me of these lines:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!'
Or as Pressfield says in his book: "When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete."
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