The Creative Instinct

Don’t you just love inner dialogues:

Oh… I really do love this saying…

What? How can you say that? This saying is so far wrong it’s coming round the other side and taking a crafty peak at being right.

It is right! It’s one of the great personal development aphorisms. It’s a fantastic motivator for helping people get moving when they’re stuck. We love this saying. We use it all the time don’t we?

Well…that’s true, I suppose. But on the other hand it’s based on a total and fundamental lie. There is no such thing as no change!

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O-o-o-okay then. You may notice that once again I’m in two minds about a wonderful/rubbish Sideways Saying. It’s a category that’s pretty good for that. I hope you’ll stay with me long enough to explain why this saying can be so very powerful for all we creative types – and why, when we explore the fundamentally flawed assumption at it’s core, we may find something far more powerful and perhaps, even a little terrifying.

How This Saying Can Work Brilliantly

There’s a single narrow scenario where this saying is fantastic – you are stuck in a bad situation, especially a repetitive, unproductive and negative cycle of events where your only response is to is to keep on doing the same old stuff. You hope that what didn’t work before will miraculously begin to give you better results.

For instance, you desperately want to spend more time on your artwork, but your other life activities seem too important or difficult to change. So you keep struggling by on the scraps of time that come your way.

Here’s the harsh reality – if you don’t find new solutions, new attitudes, you will not gain the creative time you desire. Simple as that. So here is your stark choice – do nothing and get used to it – or do something to knock you out of your uncomfortable status quo.

A Call To Bravery

In this scenario if nothing changes, nothing changes is a call to bravery. Ideally – you gather your courage and do something different. It’s in this sense that this saying is a superb personal development catalyst for your creative projects, and for all the other parts of your life. Here are two similar adages that augment it.

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

If what you are doing isn’t working – do something different

All three sayings are fabulously useful in jolting you out of the horrible incapaciting effect of inaction and repetition.

Why It’s Also Fundamentally Wrong

So on the level I’ve described above it works – in fact it works exceptionally well. But here’s the killer: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NO CHANGE. If you haven’t already – you’d better get used to this: nothing stands still. Sure, things can endure for a very long time, but never for ever.

I’d like to offer a modified version that takes this into account. Here goes:

If nothing changes, expect things to get worse.

Now I know that’s a tad paradoxical, and maybe it’s a bit… well - heavy. But doesn’t it have a ring of truth to it?

If, using that example above, you aren’t making enough time for your creative expression, and do nothing about it, the likelihood is that the situation will gradually deteriorate. What time you do have will feel less and less satisfying and will probably get eaten away by other concerns. And continued lack of improvement and quality output will almost certainly cripple what little motivation you manage to maintain.

Unfortunately this tends to be true for most negative situations: left unchanged things get worse.

· Your theatre group has one bad member who disrupts everything. Eventually your good members drift away.

· You keep making do with faulty equipment. Eventually you’ll end up with no equipment at all.

· You suspect your agent is screwing you and not working in your best interest, but you don’t like to rock the boat and so you say nothing. Either: s/he will keep screwing you until it really hurts – or if s/he’s being straight, your relationship will fail because you let your unjustified thoughts fester rather than finding out what the truth is.

And guess what? Even success withers away if you do nothing more than repeat the same formula over and over again.

That’s why successful genre fiction constantly challenges its own genre.

It’s the reason that rock music has been able to keep alive and kicking for so long – it is constantly developing and changing. When it stops it will become a dead art form, like rock and roll.

And it’s how Picasso maintained his stature – by movement, development and evolution of his art. What would Picasso’s influence on art have been if he’d stayed firmly in his Blue Period?

Of course, there’s always a risk that the changes you make either won’t work or will make things worse. That’s inescapably true and I’m not suggesting you make change just for change’s sake. Another saying: if it ain’t broke don’t fix it comes to mind here.

But if it is broke or you can see it’s going to break sometime soon – then you need to do something about it.

Whether we like it or not - unless we are proactive with our life, unless we strive to make positive change happen, negative change will eventually happen all by itself.

 

Does that sound bleak? I prefer to think of it as exciting. Life is like a plane – take the controls and fly.

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Other articles:

You Can’t Live Well With a Malnourished Soul

7 Tips to Shock You Out of Your Creative Rut