Monday, February 15, 2010

Facing the Fear

An extract from an interview with Seth Godin.
The interviewer was Gretchen Rubin on The Happiness Project - a blog with the subtitle: A chronicle of my attempts to test-drive every tip, principle and scientific study that promotes happiness. (Hmmm - happiness is scientific?)


Back to Seth:

"There are two secrets to creativity:

1. Understand that there's no gene for it. No cultural or family history required. Creativity isn't a gift from above, it's something that everyone is capable of.


2. The only thing that prevents your creativity from showing up is fear. Fear of being laughed at, fear of being wrong, fear of seeming uninformed. So many creative exercises and habits revolve around overcoming that fear.

For me, the single best thing you can do to become more creative is to be wrong more often. Creative people are wrong all the time (look at Apple's long string of failures). The goal is to create a safe place to be wrong, a way to be wrong without destroying yourself. The more wrong I am, the more often, the better I seem to get at being creative."

I can certainly agree with Seth about the fear aspect: it's very easy to think 'no one will like this - I'm going to make a fool of myself [especially when it comes to acting, or performing my own music] - this stuff isn't as good as so-and-so's' - and more. It's something you have to keep stepping up on top of and ignoring.


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