I love, love, love Brene Brown’s work! If you haven’t seen her Ted Talk you can view it here:
You’re welcome.
In her book The Gifts of Imperfection, Brene describes her thoughts about creativity. I want to share them with you here because I think many people have similar biases. I used to think the same thing about my own work.
The older I got, the less value I put on creativity and the less time I spent creating. When people asked me about crafting or art or creating, I relied on the standard, "Oh I’m not the creative type." On the inside, I was really thinking, "Who has time for painting and scrapbooking and photography when the real work of achieving and accomplishing needs to be done?" By the time I was working on this research, my lack of interest in creativity had turned into disdain. I’m not sure if I would categorize my feelings about creativity as negative stereotypes, shame triggers, or some combination of the two, but it came to the point that I thought creating for the sake of creating was self-indulgent at best and flakey at worst.
Can you relate to that? How can you thrive as an artist in a culture deeply entrenched in false beliefs?
Change is hard. If you can’t change the culture, you can always change yourself. I would highly recommend reading Brene’s books. I have read almost every one and am now going back and re-reading them to get a clearer understanding so I can share this information with others. Let me know if this resonates with you. What if the beliefs you thought were true were no longer true?