Gettin' Psyched & Psyched-out

befriending 3 enemigos

(my drawing of a feeling…could be psyched or psyched-out. 2019.)

dear creators,

In this month’s letter, I’d like to share an excerpt from the intro of my book project. As I’ve been saying, when it comes to our particular creative flow, as soon as we get psyched to make something we end up summoning the hordes of twisted thought demons that like to psyche us out. Though we all have particular limiting idea-combos, I’ve noticed that the following triple threat haunts me and all of my students in a variety of contexts.

Here’s the excerpt:

The 3 Enemigos

Before strolling into this multidimensional creative landscape (and taking a dip in the streams that may be dammed with particular perceptions), I’d like to let you in on what I consider to be the top (most general) sources of resistance to free expression:

Expectation

Comparison

Judgement

This unholy trinity can slam the door in our face before we’ve even leaned into a step— or just when we think we’re sailing along, they’ll totally close-line us. I’m not denying the upsides of these concepts, but for the purpose of reconnecting with our creative impulses, I’m choosing to expose the way they might muck up our flow.

Take expectation, for starters. At first, it may seem nice to have something specific to work towards and we all know the benefits of setting goals and intentions. But I’ve noticed a clamping tension begins to take hold when I get all attached to preconceived results and I set myself up with a focus on what my work isn’t. My inner brat comes forward with its I want THIS and I want it now! and then I’m holding the work and myself captive in a sense— which completely blinds me to what is actually trying to unfold. For example, if I’m learning a wet on wet technique in watercolour and I fixate on getting the same effects as my instructor (or what I saw somewhere), I could easily get frustrated when I experience different results. Instead of looking at my painting and seeing that I used a little water and this happened or a lot of water and this other thing happened, I might only see— it’s not working, I can’t do it! Attempting to control results in a creative space has only ever taken me to uptight/let-down/I-suck-at-this/to-hell-with-this/self-doubt feelings.

Comparison is linked to expectation in the way we compare our results with a known idea or example. We also tend to compulsively compare ourselves to others and their results. I’ve never been in an art class where everyone was stoked on their own work. Most people favour someone else’s stuff better and wish they could have that person’s results. But isn’t it pretty natural to enjoy other people’s creations more than our own? How many musicians out there crank up their own albums in the car? From this perspective, comparison is another distraction that hijacks our attention toward what we aren’t or what our work isn’t.

Judgement tends to lord over everything. If I wasn’t being judgy, I wouldn’t be getting hung up on any failure to meet expectations or thoughts about being better or worse than someone else. Following a creative impulse and then immediately subjecting it to this looks bad is a sure way to stomp out any possibility. Our ideas of bad are based on what we already know, and if we get hasty with our conclusions, we’re blind to any potential. It’s like criticizing the seed of a pine tree— that’s it? It just looks like a dead insect. It’s not going anywhere. Garbage!

(Okay, so these are spruce, not pine trees but also not dead insects. I used to see them on one of my night-bike-ride routes)

I must confess that I’m never fully free of these 3 enemigos, but I can share what might be called a strategy to befriend them. When I’m making something and I start gettin’ uptight about results, I remind myself:

who cares where this is going

it doesn’t matter what other people are doing or saying

so what if this is any good

If this doesn’t release the tension, I’ll switch to an exercise, activity or stillness where I can tune back into an open neutral frequency before resuming whatever I was immersed in. It’s important that I’m not working against any of this trio because, as they say, whatever you resist will persist.

In a way, they really aren’t the enemy of creativity and are more like a necessary opposite— sorta like, by experiencing the cold we can know and appreciate warmth. So I take any feeling of resistance as a signal that I’m probably leaving the creative space and I’m grateful for the heads up (though I may have a tantrum before the gratitude sinks in!).

[…]

“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That's one of my favourite things to say. So what.”

~Andy Warhol

* * *

I’d like to add something else that might be worth a shot to recover from gettin’ psyched-out by these 3 enemigos. Once I clued in to how they warped my perception of my work, I started hiding the work from myself— meaning, I put it in a drawer or somewhere out of sight for a few days, weeks,…whatever it would take for me to see it with fresh senses that weren’t filtered through my mind’s comparison, expectation and judgement.

This is something I offer to my students. Whether they openly reject their work or not, I keep it all on a shelf for at least a week (6 weeks max) and then hand it back to them. I really enjoy witnessing them see their work as if it’s for the first time— sometimes they’ll even deny that they made it (our mental distortions have a really freaky amount of power).

Have you noticed these 3 enemigos going to work on other areas of your life? I can’t think of a realm they haven’t infiltrated—whether it’s relationships, health, money, etc. Though I came to what I might call a balance with them in my creative practice, that wisdom seems to be taken hostage when I take on anything new. I guess there’s no auto-pilot when it comes to awareness (good thing it doesn’t require too much effort).

always wondering,

Corrie

P.S.

This month I’ll also be releasing the full intro to my book project, Fort in the Living Room: Unlearning to Release Your Creative Being. I’ve been excited to share this since 2020 and don’t wanna wait any longer. Every month going forward, I’ll release a part of it until it’s all available here on Substack. If you’re curious, have some spare cash, and wanna support my work, you can find it beyond the paywall:) Thanks so muchly for reading!