This is a blog about creativity, so of course we love talking about fear!
Creative expression is an honest reflection of yourself out into the world, and this is not an easy thing to do. Naturally, a lot of fear comes with the territory – fear of judgement, fear of visibility, fear of invisibility, fear of failure, fear of success… You name it, you can find a way to be afraid of it.
I mentioned last week that sometimes it can be hard to discern whether your fear is legitimate, or if it’s just keeping you stuck. You have an inner voice that is creative and enthusiastic and has all sorts of great ideas! You also have a voice in there that is wary, doubtful, and feels it would be safer to just stand still and do nothing.
What do you do? Pick one to listen to? Okay, then – which is really you?
Unfortunately, the answer is they’re both you, and you will need to chart a course of action by listening to each and weighing their merits (we called this bringing the voice of logic to the table last week).
Here are four questions you can ask yourself to help you gain some perspective and clarity (and move through that fear, if you need to).
Would you say the same thing to a friend?
I don’t have the talent for that!
The likelihood of success is 1:100, why bother?
It’s safer to keep quiet and do nothing. I’ll just watch other people do it instead.
When you notice that you’re shutting your own ideas down, take a step back and think: If a friend came to me with this idea, what advice and encouragement would I give them?
Say your friend has been taking acting lessons for a little while. They come to you excitedly and announce that they’ll be auditioning for a local play! They’re a bit nervous, though… Should they put themselves out there like that? Let’s assume there are no significant financial or legal roadblocks here.
What’s your reaction?
Most likely, you encourage them to go for it! You see their excitement, you’re happy that they’ve found something they really want to try, and you want to see them succeed. You are supporting their inner creative (and clearly they should listen to you – you give excellent advice).
Now, what if it was you wanting to audition? Are you going for it, or are you sitting there telling yourself you are terrible, you have no experience, there are probably plenty of better actors than you, why waste their time and subject yourself to humiliation?
Are you and your friend really that different? Probably not. Why did you tell them to go for it, then?
Would you take your own advice?
I’ll bet you’re a kind and conscientious person, and you wouldn’t just send your friend off to their doom with a nod and a smile. No, it’s not that you don’t care whether they will fail or succeed. You probably just want the best for them, and their enthusiasm shows you that they’ve found something they really love to do, and that’s all there is to it.
Facts.
So why is the advice and encouragement for your friend so different from what you would offer yourself?
Fear.
(One might also say the ego is attached to your outcome, but not your friend’s. I have to think the ego is reacting to fear. (Disclaimer: not a psychologist.))
Fear has a tendency to play out all of the fantastical ways you may fail, and even though it takes enormous unlikely leaps to get there, it acts as though your failure and humiliation is assured. Forget doing what you love to be happy expressing yourself out in the world – the fear is doing the important work of ensuring you don’t embarrass yourself.
Fear is louder than logic which, if we listened, would contextualize these concerns for you. We fear failure, and yet as we are thinking about our friend’s new creative idea, we know that failure is nothing to fear – it’s a normal, natural part of the creative journey, and it’s totally worth it to do something you love. Also, failure is not assured – you may very well succeed.
So, be a better friend to yourself!
Of course, fear is there for a reason: to protect you. So why wouldn’t you listen to it for your own protection? Good question!
Fear is there for a reason – but is it a good one?
The answer is “maybe”.
It tries to protect you from all manner of unpleasant experiences, whether being eaten by a lion or discovering that one person didn’t like your performance enough to give you a role that one time.
When you’re feeling the fear, it helps to take a step back and figure out what kind it is:
- A legitimate concern that you should heed (motorcycle karaoke might be too big a health and safety risk, let’s go in another direction)
- An indication of where to put in a bit of work (let’s just put some extra effort in to make sure this sketch is politically correct before we perform it)
- An understandable but acceptable risk in order to work with that alluring creative idea (people might think my art is bad, and I’ll be embarrassed – I’ll chance it)
When the fear has a legitimate point, listen to it. When it doesn’t, feel the fear and do the thing anyways.
Know that as you carve away the real threats to your health and safety, fear starts picking at smaller and smaller things, until it’s practically making stuff up.
Fear can also be a directional marker!
If you really drill down into your whys and so whats, you may find that the reason you’re afraid boils down to how much you truly care about the idea you brought to the table. It matters deeply to you, that’s why you’re afraid, and that’s also why you should do it.
Of course, it’s okay to stay quiet not doing much if that’s what you truly want, but I think some of us get stuck here. Maybe we get to be a little on edge, a little irritable. Maybe we start feeling a bit lost, even while standing still. Maybe we get a pang when we think about going out to try something new, and we don’t know if the pang is excitement or fear.
(By the way, one thing I learned from Mel Robbins was that fear and excitement feel the same – it’s just how you frame it. It’s the context. She suggests you can feel afraid but tell yourself you’re excited. I tried this and it totally worked – a story for another day.)
If you’re going to stay at home and not do much, you want to be consciously making that choice rather than allowing fear to call the shots.
How do you figure out if that’s really what you want?
Get honest with yourself about how you want to feel
If you really like quiet and consistency, and you know this about yourself, absolutely go for it. Tempering fear doesn’t need to equate to loud, exciting energy, that’s just what it looks like for some of us. You can put fear in its place and still enjoy stillness and solitude!
It’s just that sometimes we aren’t being quiet because it’s what we truly want, we’re doing it because the alternative is to listen to our inner creative, and that’s just too scary with its outlandish ideas and visibility. When this is the case, your desire for quiet is probably accompanied by an underlying nervousness and a feeling of resignation.
In that case, listen to that voice that’s enthusiastic and excited and thinks you could be doing something really cool! Why? Because that’s the energy you want to be in yourself. It’s also the energy you want to bring out into the world.
I don’t think you want to be in a world where you feel like you have to hide because you fear all of the things. I think you want to be in a world where people love the thing they do and share it openly, and they’re inspired by others doing the same. You included.
It doesn’t even need to be that deep, though.
If I want to live in a world where there are more cute handmade crochet animals, I’m going to devote some time and resources to making more cute handmade crochet animals (and maybe teach others how to make them too, for a total cute handmaid crochet animal takeover).
I don’t want to feel afraid all of the time, so why would I devote more time and energy buying into my most fearful voice?
Life is for living, and I’m interested in living a creative one. I want to fill it with ideas and the thrill of seeing them come to life! I want to see other people finding their authentic voice, developing their passions, and contributing them in a heartfelt way into the world.
So I’ll lean more heavily into the thoughts and actions that align with what I’m looking for.
What are you looking for?
Who are you, anyway?
I’ve been writing a lot about rekindling the creative spark, cultivating authenticity, and getting to know yourself in all your creative glory. Much of the point of this is to answer the question: Who are you, creatively?
If you can answer this question confidently, you will have the clarity you need to feel the fear and act anyways.
I wonder if the inner creative is possibly the truest and most honest version of ourselves.
Julia Cameron talked a lot about the inner creative as your inner “artist child” in The Artist’s Way. The thing about children is they just “are” – they haven’t taken on the weight of the world yet, they get really excited about little things that mean something to them, they don’t censor themselves or carefully pre-mediate the way they present themselves to the world (unless they are my children trying hard for that extra cookie, but I digress).
They don’t have the same level of fears and anxieties that we carry around yet. As I understand it, fears beyond our basic instinctual ones are developed over time through various life experiences. It’s beneath the layers of fear that your inner artist child speaks from, I think. (Again, not a psychologist.)
Weary, weather-worn and wise, Adult You knows better than to get up and sing karaoke in front of a bunch of strangers. Fear reminds you how embarrassing it would be – what would people think? Besides, you’re terrible!
Real You, the inner artist child, pure of heart and unencumbered by the weight of experience, is jumping up and down with excitement – they don’t care how they sound. They aren’t worried about the strangers and their opinions.
The inner artist child has a big song in their heart, and all they see is the microphone.
