4 tips for walking a creative path

"Traveller there is no path, the path is made by walking"
Antonio Machado

I try to walk my talk. I strive to live a creative & self-expressive life, a life that gives me daily opportunities to be curious, to explore & discover, not only the natural environment and all its inspiring beauty & spectacle, but also the inner wilderness of my own creative potential.
 

I know that most of you reading this strive to do this too, and I’m guessing that most of you, like me, struggle.

It’s not easy, we are constantly pulled towards safety & comfort; towards the familiar & the certain; towards all the things we do really, really well.

It’s hard to resist, isn’t it?

Who doesn't want to choose guaranteed success versus potential ruin?

Who wouldn’t choose safety & comfort over ridicule & flat-on-your-face-ness peril?

Despite this, creativity & self-expression have a central place in my life, just like sunshine & water; without them life feels stagnant & empty.

Here are 4 insights about creativity that I find useful to remember when I start to feel lost, insecure and doubt myself and my place on this creative journey.

1. Be prepared to not know the way - the creative process is generative, that means that each step we take generates a whole set of potential unknowns, offering a selection of new paths. The thing is, we can’t know what these are going to be until we have taken a step.

Generative means that the path is becoming a path as we walk, we are walking and we are making the path at the same time. We have to let it emerge, observe it, and step into it with complete trust that it is going to take us to the place we most need to go.

I’m not saying that we should go out into the wilderness not knowing where we want to go, I am saying we need to be prepared to walk along overgrown paths, rocky terrain, cliff edges or even machete ourselves a new path because, to stay with the metaphor, nobody has explored this part of our wilderness before, so there is no one right way to get where we are going.  

2. Be prepared to stay a while because the creative process requires us to dwell in uncertainty. Take plenty of water, a compass, our soft, self-inflating sleeping mat, whatever we need and camp out in the unknown.
Creativity is in our DNA, the challenge is in letting go, waiting, allowing, and trusting. 

3. Be prepared to do it badly, because more than anything the creative process requires that we work no matter what. We must carve out time each day to write, sing, play the guitar, plan our business.

Whatever we are up to, we need to ensure we do it because only by doing will we improve, grow & thrive as a creative force.

4. Be prepared to move away from people who do not support us because the creative process will make us feel both invincible & vulnerable. We need to be around people who are ok with us at our fiercest & most confident as well as at our weakest and most frightened. 

As Julia Cameron puts it, we need people around us who are OK for us to be ‘as big as we are and as small as we are, as competent and powerful as we are, and as terrified and as tiny as we sometimes feel’.

So, surround yourself with people that inspire you to keep making your path as you walk it, who encourage you to stay put when you feel like packing up, who support you not only when you feel brave but also when you feel insecure; and, most importantly, surround yourself with people who strengthen your resolve to keep working & thriving every day.

And the most important thing to remember: we have to keep walking!