In many ways, art is about trust. Being creative is really about sailing the waves of not knowing what to do and at the same time being certain for finding a way to figure things out. That’s when the ‘Trusting the process’ -mentality steps in.
The best way to build, is to play with blocks of trust. My love for photography guided me towards that effortless construction site. For example, in product photography the biggest excitement is the fact that the end result still surprises me each time. It feels like magic to go from random doodles to seeing the final artwork. In short, it was all carefully planned, yet at the same time not planned at all.
With the use of these three elements of trust, your creative process will align with your intention:
1. Competence
When something looks effortless, it is often due to lots of practice, experiments and dealing with trial and error. Competence doesn’t mean doing everything right. In the world of art, right or wrong doesn’t exist. You can only fail if you never try. As a result, your competence grows as much as you are setting yourself up to possible “failures”.
2. Respect
In my experience having a creative brain is both a blessing and a huge challenge. I once thought that I need to avoid being creative in order to live better. In that sense, it took lots of acceptance, learning and growth to start living with creativity rather than continue fighting against it. With respect and humility, you can dig deeper. Healthy relationships with others including your unique artistic alliance, is all linked to the depth and awareness of your own sense of self.
3. Consistency
Being aware of it or not, we all have agreements with ourselves and the way we live. Consistency is often seen as the output of actions or a vision of producing similar results again and again and showing up in a way that is considered appropriate. Without honesty and openness, consistency may become a way to self-sabotage and forcefully lay your actions into an imaginary box or a strict timeframe. Doing things by chasing perfection or blindly following steps taken by somebody else won’t bring you creative results. Trust is always born internally and therefore your consistent actions need to be aligned with your values and vision of long term goals. Rather than expecting consistency to show up in a certain way, learn to show up consistently in your creative process by trusting yourself.
“If we want to find the way back to ourselves and one another, we need language and the grounded confidence to both tell our stories and to be stewards of the stories that we hear. “ -Brene Brown
For further reading on emotional intelligence , please consider The Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown.
