The Creative Life

I have come to believe in fact that Creativity and Fear are conjoined twins; they share all the same organs, and they cannot be separated without killing them both.

I think fear gets a bad rap. The minute that creeping, dark and sticky feeling sinks into our gut or whispers in our ear, we usually shut down and we take it as a sign that we are venturing into dangerous and forbidden territory. So, we play it safe, make a u-turn and head back to the known.

Don’t get me wrong—there IS good fear! There is the walking in a dark alley fear and the I think she’s talking behind my back fear. But the fear that keeps us small and limited, the fear that keeps us from living a fully creative life—whether we are writing songs or raising children or writing legal documents or creating public policy—is not good fear.

That fear wants us to play it safe. That fear says—don’t do it, you aren’t strong enough, wise enough, talented enough, experienced enough. That fears shuts off the conversation between you and your higher self. That fear feels dark and scary. Because the worst thing we can do in this life is play it small, and not step into the fullest expression of the selves we came here to be.

So stepping out and living creatively means that we WILL take risks and we will make ourselves vulnerable, and there will be naysayers, and we will fall flat on our faces many times, and there will be moments of confusion and scary solitude and feeling lost, but if we are taking these steps in the service of our highest self, our full and creative self, we are truly living.

Elizabeth Gilbert also says, I love Creativity enough to accept that Fear will always come along with it. So, that is the question we should ask ourselves every day—how much do I really want to live a Creative life? What am I willing to risk? How fully do I want to live?