Saturday, October 10, 2015

Fear and Creativity

Are you a creative type?  Would you like to wear the label “Creative”?  Then you have an ugly twin who follows you everywhere you go.

Elizabeth Gilbert says this about that:  “Fear and creativity are conjoined twins.”

Especially during the early days of being a writer and blogger, I felt great panic every time it came time for me to press PUBLISH.  My thoughts were these: 
  What if this is crap?
  What if nobody reads this?
  What if I’ve got ten misspelled words?
  What if it is boring?
   What if people laugh?
   What if the literary cops come and put me in jail for subject/verb abuse?

Most creative types I know and read about face this dilemma in pursuing their craft.  Every dancer wants to be perfect, every singer wants to wow their audience, and every speaker wants to astound their listeners with an amazingly glib delivery.

And along comes fear.

Fear rides on the shoulder of every attempt to be creative or every attempt to do something new. 

AND WE DO IT ANYWAY!


We create, we write, and sing, dance, build tall buildings, create movie scripts; we deliver sermons and speeches, we run for office and a thousand other pursuits, and all the while we thumb our nose at fear.  We say ‘Fear, get out of the way.  I’ve got stuff to produce the likes of which this world has yet to see.  Step aside.  My creative self is coming through.”

We face our fears and we create something of nothing.

Got fear? 

Who doesn’t?

A question for you:  Who’s going to drive your bus - Fear or Creativity?



P Michael Biggs
Offering Hope
Encouragement Inspiration
One Word at a Time


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