Common Mistakes of the Creative Professional
You have to start with your lived experience. I learned some time ago that you’re really not the outlier or the alien or the weirdo you think you are. I’ve made a whole alternate career from documenting and discussing the things I’ve gone through, sharing the observations I’ve made, and bleating the fears about what might be around the corner in public. It’s the lived experience that turns out to be shared, and it bonds people and groups. A big part of that alternate career is creativity and story coaching. I’ve been doing that for several years, and I’ve noticed common blocks and missed opportunities that harm flow and motivation. I’ve made each of these mistakes many times over.
Come Together
Almost every coaching client and every person I encounter in my creative industry career is, in some way, lacking in collective energy. Creativity is a shared condition, and no matter how introverted, extroverted, or busy we might be, if we isolate too much, something is lost. Overthinking creeps in; ideas cannot grow without being shared with others, and on a basic psychological level, we feel safer and heard around others. It’s insanely busy in this world. We’re all knackered. It’s expensive to rent workspace, but we have to be creative and intentional to ensure the right balance of solitude and connection.
Trust the Narrative
It’s incredibly easy to be a peripheral character in your own story, especially when the cost of living is insanely high and we pack our schedules to ensure those bills are paid. During a particularly rough spell of stress and financial panic, the noise in my head reached fever pitch, and I had more sleepless nights than I care to count. Each day was a blur of badly managed tasks, spilling over and over again through weeks and months. Eventually, I found the bravery to make time to sit down, vent, look in the mirror, and set a course forward that excited me. It was loose because it’s important that I can follow my curiosity and remain flexible, but thanks to a comment by coach Tina Rapp, I started to ask myself not what I wanted to do, but how I wanted to feel. I got organised to help clear my head, but leaned harder than ever into my interests, my humour and point of view, and my life experiences to project my way of seeing into the world. Slowly, the fiery determination to live the career I wanted that had shaped my formative years reignited; a refusal to remain reactive and a bullish, proactive way of creating the conditions for better-aligned opportunities to emerge. It’s scary and requires bravery to dance with the unknown, but entirely possible for each of us. And when in doubt, consider the arc of your story to now, knowing the next steps are for you to take.
Value the Silence
Rest is a problem for the vast majority of people in the creative industry I’ve worked with. There are so many reasons in today’s world that make it hard to switch off, but deep rest – not just rest to gain energy for the next task – is essential. Tala Schlossberg spoke of learning to rest for her artist practice on episode 263 of The Creative Condition podcast. It’s when we find joy in the small things again; it’s when we stare at a wall and let our shoulders slump. It’s when we realise things that are hidden in the chaos of the daily grind. Sensitivity is a foundational trait in people who lead their lives and careers with creativity – a huge asset – but also something that, if we don’t stop to nurture, can be our undoing. We burn out more easily than less-sensitive people, feel the pain and fear of the world as much as we benefit from the wonder of it all, so stop; know that sometimes your system simply needs a break in order to establish emotional balance. Find ways to frame it that work for you – one client who’d made himself sick by not letting up is a football fan, so we used the athlete lens to reframe it. I asked him if a manager would play his star player every minute of every game. And why not? Well, it seemed plainly obvious that the player would reach their limit very quickly and fail to deliver their best across a whole season. Suddenly, we had a brief!
Play more
As adults, the things that brought us pure, unconditional joy as children don’t deliver the same buzz. But play is just as essential as it was then. It’s how we access the unconscious, unwind, and maintain the presence of magic in our minds. Do you make time to read that 3-star crime fiction romp on the sofa? Do you kick a ball against a wall? What about painting a Warhammer figurine or playing Pokémon cards? Play can be interpreted in a million ways for everyone, but doing things simply to experience them as they are, with no agenda and for pleasure, is too easily forgotten. I help my clients re-prioritise play and curiosity because they often fall into the trap of believing that if a task isn’t productive or a justifiable use of time, it’s mere distraction, or something to feel guilty about. This simply isn’t true and an absence of play is extremely damaging to our forward motion and ability to know the right way forward!
The 168-hour week
Beyond the Couch author Allison Heiliczer told me on episode 274 of The Creative Condition podcast that she reminds her busiest clients that there are 168 hours in a week. So if they’re not finding one hour to dedicate to something important, then it’s not that there isn’t time, but more to do with the need to reprioritise the use of time. A busy life is a valid excuse for any of us, but how much do you truly want something? Is it worth digging into that and allocating the right time for something that you really do want?