“Ultimately, your desire to create must be greater than your fear of it.”
Motivation for Reading
Bad Bunny once said in one of YouTube’s Artist Spotlight Stories (highly recommend watching, linked at the bottom), “…if I have an idea of something, it has to be done or at least tried.” I love the spirit of this and aspire to live a life constantly experimenting and bringing the things in my head to life. Because. There are a ton of things I aspire to do, a whirlwind of ideas (e.g., social movements I’d love to start, books I want to write, blog posts I’d hope to publish, programs I wanna build, videos and doc films I’d love to create) floating around in my mind, some completely whimsical, some that will never happen, and some I feel I must bring to life.
Given that, my motivation for reading the book really stemmed from a few questions:
How do I release my inhibitions and truly create and make real, materially what is in my mind?
What is holding me back from creating? What is getting in the way?
Why are some creatives and artists so successful? What is it about the way they think, about their creative process, that sets them apart from others?
In this book, I found some of my answers.
Half Baked Review
Key Themes:
Practice: “Embodiment of an approach to a concept. To set up our practice, we must set up a daily schedule where we engage in particular rituals at specific times every day or week.” I personally have a 2-hr morning ritual every day during the week, where I read, journal, meditate, create something, and it has been wondrous.
Nature as teacher: “There is never a shortage of awe and inspiration to be found outdoors… Deepening our connection to nature will serve our spirit, and what serves our spirit invariable serves our artistic output.” Go outside.
Self-doubt: “Flaws are human, and the attraction of art is humanity held in it. If we were machinelike, the art wouldn’t resonate. It would be soulless. With life comes pain, insecurity, and fear… We’re all different and we’re all imperfect, and the imperfections are what makes each of us and our work interesting.”
“It’s worth noting the distinction between doubting the work and doubting yourself.”
“Whatever insecurities we have can be reframed as a guiding force in our creativity.”
Kintsugi: Japanese artful form of repair. When a piece of pottery or something is broken, instead of getting it back to its original condition, the artisan highlights the faults by using gold to fill the cracks. Instead of the flaw diminishing the work, “it becomes a focal point, an area of both physical and aesthetic strength.”
Distraction: “When we reach an impasse at any point in the creative process, it can be helpful to step away from the project to create space and allow a solution to appear.”
Beginner’s mind: “These childlike superpowers include being in the moment, valuing play above all else, having no regard for consequences, being radically honest without consideration, and having the ability to move freely from one emotion to the next without holding on to the story.”
Discipline: “Discipline and freedom seem like opposites. In reality, they are partners. Discipline is not a lack of freedom, it is a harmonious relationship with time.”
Letting go: “Part of the process of letting go is releasing any thoughts of how you or your piece will be received… one of our greatest rewards of making art is our ability to share it.”
Abundance: “The recognition of abundance fills us with hope that our brightest ideas still await us and our greatest work is yet to come.”
Creative Practices You Could Apply
Pay attention: “When looking for a solution to a creative problem, pay close attention to what’s happening around you. Look for clues pointing to new methods or ways to further develop current ideas.”
Open a book for inspiration: If you’re ever stuck, or looking for an answer to a question, pick up a book, open it to a random page, and see if there is any guidance or inspiration from that page to guide you.
Look inward: “Our inner world is every bit as interesting, beautiful, and surprising as nature itself. It is, after all, born of nature.” What’s your inner world like?
Dream journal: Keep a dream journal and when wake up each morning, write, in as much detail, what you can remember of your dreams.
Break the rules: “Rules direct us to average behaviors. If we’re aiming to create works that are exceptional, most rules don’t apply. Average is nothing to aspire to.”
“The artists who define each generation are generally the ones who live outside these boundaries. Not the artists who embody the beliefs and conventions of their times, but the ones who transcend them. Are is confrontation.”
“Rules obeyed unconsciously are far stronger than the ones set on purpose. And they are more likely to undermine the work.”
Reprieve from your inner critic: “Working to free yourself from inner voices is a kind of meditation.”
Self awareness: “To be self-aware is to have the ability to tune into what we think, how we feel, and how much we feel it without interference. To notice how we notice the outside world. A well-tuned ability to expand and refine our self-awareness is the key to making revelatory works.”
When at an impasse: If you’re at an impasse in an A/B test, use the coin toss method. Decide which option will be heads and which will be tails, then flip the con. When the coin is spinning in the air, you’ll likely notice a quiet preference or wish for one of the two to come up. Which are you rooting for? This is the option to go with.
Collaboration: “Competition serves the ego. Cooperation supports the highest outcome… the best results are found when we’re impartial and detached from our own strategies.”
“Great decisions aren’t made in a spirit of sacrifice. They’re made by the mutual recognition of the best solution available.”
“The magic comes from a dynamic tension between different points of view, creating works more distinctive than a lone voice would.”
When hitting a wall:
Break down the vision/project into smaller steps
Change the environment
Change the stakes
Invite an audience
Change the context
Alter the perspective
Write for someone else
Add imagery
Write for someone else
Key Quotes
“To create is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before.”
“The ability to look deeply is at the root of creativity. To see past the ordinary and mundane and get to what might otherwise be invisible.”
“One can think of the creative act as taking the sum of our vessel’s contents as potential material, selecting for elements that seem useful or significant in the movement, and representing them. This is Source drawn through us and made into books, movies, buildings, paintings, meals, businesses — whatever projects we embark on.”
“Art is our portal to the unseen world.”
“Faith allows you to trust the direction without needing to understand it.”
“Look for what you notice but no one else sees.”
“A hunger to see beautiful things, hear beautiful sounds, feel deeper sensations. To learn, and to be fascinated and surprised on a continual basis.”
“Isolated places like a forest, a monastery, or a sailboat in the middle of the ocean are fine locations to receive direct transmissions from the universe.”
“It helps to realize that it’s better to follow the universe than those around you.”
“One of the best strategies is to lower the stakes.” When self doubt comes up.
“We’re not playing to win, we’re playing to play. And ultimately, playing is fun. Perfectionism gets in the way of fun.”
“Our continual quest for efficiency discourages looking too deeply.”
“Any label you assume before sitting down to create, even one as foundational as sculptor, rapper, author, or entrepreneur, could be more harmful than good. Strip away the labels. Now how do you see the world?”
“How can we move past disconnection and desensitization to the incredible wonders of nature and human engineering all around us?”
“The way we do anything is the way we do everything.”
“Create an environment where you’re free to express what you’re afraid to express.”
“Failure is the information you need to get to where you’re going.”
“The only way to truly know if any idea works is to test it… to truly weigh choices, it’s necessary to bring them into the physical world.”
“For the artist, whose job is testing possibilities, success is as much ruling out a solution as finding one that works.”
“Creativity is something that you are, not only something you do. It’s a way of moving through the world, every minute, every day. If you’re not driven to an unrealistic standard of dedication, it may not be the path for you.”
“For the sake of both the work and our own enjoyment, it’s of great value to continue honing our craft. Every artist, at every juncture in the process, can get better through practice, study, and research. The gifts of art are more learned and developed than innate. We can always improve.”
“We share our filter, our way of seeing, in order to spark an echo in others. Art is a reverberation of an impermanent life.”
“The reason we’re alive is to express ourselves in the world. And creating art may be the most effective and beautiful method of doing so.”