Creative Inhibitors (And How To Overcome Them)

To be authentically creative, we have to get good at moving from inhibitions to expressions. 

I’m on the record saying it takes a mix of practice, performance, persistence, patience, and (seeing/learning/knowing the) patterns. 

And the best place to work out those 5 Ps is… in the tragic gap, wherever you are in life.

Wherever you are, take your seat, and get to work. Set the curiosity switch to “on.” Get the creative act or habit or whatever you call it queued UP. 

Be careful not to think too magically. Don’t get drawn to being irrelevantly idealistic. A world of only possibility is not a real world. 

Be careful not to think too heroically. Don’t get drawn into being corrosively cynical. A world of only doing makes Jack (and Jill, and _____) a seriously dull human. 

But take great care to take your seat – in between the world that is possible and the world as it is. It’s only the tragic gap if no one builds a bridge. And you’re taking your seat to do it. 

Rumble with the mixing of wonder and rigor. Embrace the realistic approach to solving the problem. A problem. Any problem that bridges the two and parents a novel solution. 

The word novel comes from the nov- prefix meaning “new.” 

A creation is taking anything, nothing, or something, and making at least one new thing with it.

And when you create, you are being authentically creative. 

You’re doing it from your seat – from the seat you’ve taken. 

Inspiration is not overcoming obstacles, it’s refusing to be overcome by obstacles. 

To sit with them. 

To be curiously inspired by them. 

And to act. 

Because there’s no creativity without an action. And there’s often more than one. Just try – again, and again, and again.