May 11, 2021
Creative Suffocation & How to Breathe Again
Suffocation is basically when you can’t breathe, and creative suffocation is when you are full of ideas, but you are too afraid to get them out, to share, and to believe that they’ll work. You live every morning thinking today is the day you’ll exhale your ideas but by night you die thinking to yourself that all the creativity in you cannot leave the premises of your mind. What if your ideas are too absurd? What if no one likes them? What if someone asks you to expand on an idea and you have nothing more to give? What if people laugh at you and troll? What if someone cheats, copies, and takes them away from you?
We need to breathe. We need to have the belief that we can share our ideas. We need to take the leap of faith or perhaps take the risk to plate our ideas and serve them out.
Following are some tips to do this. They may work, or they may not. One just needs to try and find the best process for themselves. There is no magical pill, as Jim Kwik puts it. There is no one secret sauce, it is all in you, as Po from Kung Fu Panda realized.
Trust Yourself That You Can Protect Your Ideas
The first step to letting your creative ideas swim out of you is to know you won’t let them drown away. Build trust in yourself, not just in others. You need to believe that you can protect your ideas through reasoning, or a fight if need (ever) be. You need to tell yourself that you can stand by your skills, no matter what they are, or how bad or good they are.
Take an example of Elon Musk, no matter how absurd his ideas may seem to some, but he takes the most essential risk of trusting himself. Just let yourself know you can share your ideas, or better yet execute them without feeling vulnerable.
Know How Much You Can Give Away
Being in control of things is a sign of a strong human being. This means sharing just enough, and developing on it when everything is certain, and knowing when to present your creative demeanor.
Knowing how much to give is a kind of art that one practices and polishes over time. Soon you know how much to share, when to share, how to share, and who to share it with. Once you master this, you are closer to breathing creativity.
Know that we wouldn’t have brilliant theories, stories, and innovations if everyone kept their ideas and creativity to themselves. The reason the world is different, for example today, is because Galileo completed his book, or that Manto tried not to succumb to a society unlike his thinking, or that Jobs dared to continue a line of products that initially had the mere capacity of saying, ‘hello’.
Take The Opportunity And Rise To The Occasion
If you have a good chance to display your creative expression, then do so. Don’t hide behind the curtain. Don’t pretend you can’t rise to the occasion, because you can. Take the opportunity, no matter if it is more challenging than you can handle, try it at least. Encourage yourself to hike the mountain of self belief and stage your theatre, pen down your book, or draw your imagination. The only thing to be cautious about is to judge whether or not the opportunity is genuine and lucrative.
And yes, breathe!
