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How to Slay the Fear Monger Through Creativity

By Valery Satterwhite

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 05Jun2009 Word count: 817 Viewed: 250 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Fear cripples creativity. Nothing new there. We've all experienced fear as we reach for inspiration, motivation and satisfaction. Fear dwells at the bottom of the pit of desperation. Fear is the lowest of lows.

I have a client who came to me and said that she felt like she was stuck in a vat of peanut butter, unable to make any headway in her career as artist. She was frustrated, exhausted and, most of all, disappointed in herself. What little energy she had left was spent beating herself up emotionally about her failure to create, her inability to birth an inspired idea. She hadn't completed a painting in months.

Many people experience highs and lows, some more extreme than others. To sustain creativity during the ebb and flow of the emotional spectrum it is best to "Keep on keepin' on." Creative musicians such as Bob Dylan, Smokey Robinson, and John Lennon have written songs about the necessity of forward movement to keep from drowning in fear or desperation. If you don't swim you'll sink! Swimming in a forward direction is optimal. At the very least, go with the flow.

"Nothing happens until something moves." - Albert Einstein

If your work depends upon your ability to create and tap into inspiration and you find the creative process elusive you may be dragging the reluctant along in the form of fear. Fear has stopped many dead in their tracks. The frightened Inner Critic chatters endlessly demanding that you hold yourself back, limit yourself to stay safe.

This Inner Critic is woefully misguided. What will keep you safe is not following the direction of the part of you that says NO to what you wish to create. What will keep you safe is to remember who you are, an empowered human being with the gifts and talent to create whatever it is that you imagine that is your birthright.

My client's primary fear was that she didn't have another creative thought in her. And wouldn't have another inspired idea ever. And in this fear she brilliantly created no creativity, no inspiration. The more she tried to force a creative moment the more she came up empty. Creativity and inspiration is delivered through the flow of life. You cannot force flow. Force is swimming upstream. Going with the flow is nature's life-affirming power.

"Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive.. the risk to be alive and express what we really are." - Don Miguel Ruiz

What is creativity about, really? Creativity has a lot to do with the willingness to take risks, small baby step risks that help overcome procrastination, the fears of rejection, failure and change. People fear change so they stay safe in the current comfort zone not willing to take one step beyond it. Fear of failure or success is a desperate attempt to stay put. The creative flow returns when you let go of your grip on your current comfort zone. Let go of your blanket of false security, false fears and resistance to inevitable change.

The funny thing about fear is that most of what people fear never happens unless they create the fearful experience themselves. Many people avoid public speaking because they fear they will drop dead of embarrassment if they forget a line, trip over the podium or evoke some other horrible public humiliation. I have seen many a speaker, even on live television broadcasted internationally, say or do something that ended up as a laughable YouTube video and not one of them has ever died as a result. Oh, they may suffer a bit of unwanted attention for a day or two. What many who have suffered deep humiliation have learned from the experience is priceless.

In learning that they did not die, that the world did not come to an end, they realized how silly their fear really was. Many people have even benefited greatly from public humiliation or even simple private criticism. We all admire and applaud the people who fall down publicly, dusted themselves off, and kept on keepin' on.

It's not what happens to you that shapes your life. It's what you do with what happens to you that creates your future. Whether you are an artist, writer, actor, musician or creator of any kind the important thing is to continue create art, write, act, or make music. Let go of any thoughts that what you create has to be good. Creativity is a process. Sometimes creating a stink bomb births inspiration for the rose.

"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free." - Jim Morrison

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