The Courageous Creator
New ways of observing our world and forming novel hypotheses in science are instrumental to progress. What can we do ourselves to increase our creative courage? By noticing that creativity is most compatible with feelings of excitement and safety. Using the courageous creator intuition pump, we can explore what limitations we have in our thinking and possible ways around them.
Imagine the following two scenarios:
1. You have an idea and start a project. While you work on it, a lot of effort is put into it. What is also invested is emotions. When we invest emotionally, we also tend to attach emotionally. You present your project to others. When praise is given, you feel a rush of pleasure and pride. When critique is given, you feel some form of pain. Since you, at this point, are emotionally attached to your project, the critique can be experienced as an attack on yourself.
2. You have an idea and start a project. While you work on it, you put a lot of enjoyment and enthusiasm into it. You appreciate the project as its own growing entity. You care for it, but it is emotionally separate from your sense of self. You present the project to others. When praise is given, you feel appreciation towards the project. When critique is given, you observe and consider this new viewpoint. You start feeling curious about this new perspective, this new possibility!
Looking in from the outside: these scenarios could seem quite similar, in the sense that a person has an idea, creates a project, and presents it. That which is vastly different is the emotional and mental landscape of the creator. If we believe that we are our thoughts, we limit our ability to create. Instead of allowing the evolution of ideas, we get stuck in defending our current position. If our sense of self is invested in this idea or mental position, it becomes not merely a defense of an idea but a fight for mental and personal survival. If we instead see thoughts merely as tools, they can exist separate from our sense of self. Thus, we mentally free ourselves to create ideas “outside the box.” I will leave it up to you to contemplate: which state of mind is most conducive to increase the creative quality of this imagined project and the well-being of its creator?