In September 2010, I went to an art retreat in New Hampshire. I had left my job in finance six months before and I was just about to start a photography course at the London College of Communication. I had travelled in Asia on my own, trained as a yoga teacher and gone through a seven day fast that turned out to be a life changing experience. I wasn’t the same person who had walked out of the city office earlier that year.
But I was scared.
More scared than I had been while ziplining in Costa Rica (well, perhaps not more scared….but equally scared). I was scared that I didn’t belong at an event like this. I was scared that I was going to walk into my painting classes and just create a big mess. I was scared that everyone would quickly realise that I wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t an Artist.
I started to visualise them all turning on me. Maybe they’d ask me to leave. Maybe I’d be eating by myself at mealtimes. Worst of all, maybe I’d be pitied and treated like some kind of cute mascot. I was a grown woman but still experiencing the fear of rejection that really ought to have been left behind at school. When on the first night the speaker made jokes about the retreat for bankers across the other side of the lake, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and hoped I didn’t have “Corporate” tattooed on my forehead.
Of course, none of the awful things I had imagined actually happened (except for me being rubbish at painting….but I always knew that). I met some wonderful friends and most importantly I had an experience that nourished my soul and that left me ready for the creative journey ahead of me. No one looked down on me….or on anyone. No one pointed and yelled “she shouldn’t be here.” No one asked me to leave when they found out I had worked in finance until six months earlier.
Two years on, I am not only an Artist…I am a professional Artist. And yet, I still struggle with mindset. Just using the A-word about myself makes me feel a little queasy. Inside, I’m still having those schoolgirl fears. I have a recurring dream in which someone asks me a very basic question about my own work that I can’t answer and everyone realises that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Everyone realises that I don’t know how to be an Artist at all and I’m just making it up as I go along. Like Harry Potter’s lightning bolt scar, my “Corporate” tattoo burns and I find myself in the body of a giant banker sucking the creativity from other people’s souls. Ok, so I’m making that last part up, but you get my point.
As much as I make light of it, this mindset is supremely unhelpful. And I’m not alone. We all make assumptions about ourselves. Many of us believe that there’s something we’re not enough of….not creative enough, not smart enough, not funny enough, not fun enough, not confident enough……
All of this not enough-ness is deeply destructive to our creative work. It comes from a part of the brain that Seth Godin refers to as the “lizard brain.” It’s the part of our brain that tries to keep us safe from threat. It tries to protect us from pain and injury and in the past it would have protected us from nature’s predators. Unfortunately, because it cannot differentiate between a physical vulnerability and an emotional one, it is also trying its hardest to stop us from doing our creative work.
Getting control of your thoughts is an enormous part of being able to produce creative work on a regular basis. Recognising that the mindset of not enough-ness is an evolutionary relic from another era, a protection mechanism that you no longer require, can be the first step in setting it aside.
I hear from people all the time that they could not do what I do because they are not creative enough and this breaks my heart because it’s such utter nonsense. To paraphrase Henry Ford, I would say this “whether you believe you are creative or not, you are right.”
Here are my three top tips for getting yourself back on track when the not-enoughness strikes
— My life coach taught me a little game called “Is this true?” in which, every time a negative mindset struck, I would have to stop, take a deep breath and start to ask myself if the statements going through my mind were really true. And here’s the catch…..you can’t say anything is true if it hasn’t happened yet. It can only be “No” or “I don’t know.” So, the thought might be “they are going to ask my to leave the art retreat when they realise I can’t paint.” Because that’s a statement about the future, I can’t say it’s true. I can only say I don’t know. And that tiny shift in mindset from believing the worst will happen, to knowing that actually you don’t know what will happen, really makes an enormous difference, because now you can just see what transpires.
Try it sometime.
— Affirmations can sometimes seem a little woo woo and I don’t stand in front of the mirror each morning repeating them out loud but I do find that, when negativity strikes, sometimes a deep breath and a moment of repeating “all will be well” to myself can clear out the cobwebs. We all self sooth in many different ways and this is a damn sight healthier than eating a tub of Ben and Jerry’s and blubbing through some cheesy movie you’ve seen a million times.
— Sometimes the simplest way to get yourself back on track is just to remind yourself that your thoughts are not beyond your control. You do, in fact, have the power to adopt a more helpful viewpoint. When I find myself in a rut, I ask myself “what is the story I am telling myself about this situation and how could I adopt a more helpful viewpoint about the same set of facts?” Taking a moment to recognise that your thoughts are within your control can often be enough to shift your mindset.
So let’s start listening to Mr Ford and start believing we are creative….before that giant banker heads this way.