“…we all possess an inborn creative force that wants to become active…The human mind is naturally creative, constantly looking to make associations and connections between things and ideas. It wants to explore, to discover new aspects of the world, and to invent. To express this creative force is our greatest desire, and the stifling of it the source of our misery.”
Robert Greene, Mastery
Creativity is the most rewarding of all human activities, and its benefits are bountiful. When immersed in the creative process we often experience what Nietzsche called Rausch – which is a physiological excitement and feeling of power that pervades our mind and body. The creative act transforms our character as each time we create something, we simultaneously sculpt our self, or as Jung observed: “It is not Goethe that creates Faust, but Faust that creates Goethe.” (Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 15) What is more, creativity generates the beauty that compensates for the ugliness that permeates so much of human existence. And when our life is falling apart, our capacity to create, like a raft in a shipwreck, can keep us psychologically afloat, or as Nietzsche explains:
“Creation – that is the great redemption from suffering, and life’s growing light.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
In this video, we explore how to overcome the internal resistances that prevent us from reaping the many benefits of actualizing our creative potential.
“Art is a war – between ourselves and the forces of self-sabotage that would stop us from doing our work. The artist is a warrior.”
Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
The psychologist Erich Fromm tells the anecdote of a man who aspired to become an accomplished writer of fiction, but internal resistances prevented him from sitting down and writing. He justified his perpetual procrastination with what Fromm called “a belief in Time” – that is, he told himself that “one day” he would get down to work. But as so often happens, “one day” never came; and as he entered middle age and the specter of death began to loom on the horizon, the man realized how much time and youthful energy he had wasted – and he had a mental breakdown. Or as Fromm writes:
“In reality he had not yet written a single line…The older such people get, the more they cling to the illusion that one day they will do it. In certain people the reaching of a certain age, generally at the beginning of the forties…there is a neurotic breakdown which is based upon the fact that one cannot live if one does not have that comforting time illusion.”
Erich Fromm, The Feeling of Being Incapable of Doing Anything
As happens to so many of us, the twin resistances of Fear and laziness killed this man’s creative aspirations.
