to be creative, be where you are

and to be where you are, face what you’re avoiding

presence as a prerequisite to creation

A somewhat surprising revelation I’ve learned about creativity: if you want to identify your ‘creative blocks’, simply pay attention to what takes you out of the moment. Your capacity to create depends on your ability to be here now. Inner work and creativity are not separate—the thought patterns that encroach on your sense of presence are what keep you from being in tune with yourself, which is the fundamental ingredient to liberated self-expression.

trading expression for belonging

We were designed to belong, to be in tribe and to prioritize connection with others. This need to belong created a pattern of always being aware of how we are perceived, and then optimizing for how we want to be perceived (i.e. becoming self-conscious then performing to get closer to who we think we should be). This is a mechanism that used to help us belong and thus survive, when belonging and survival were irreversibly linked, and now requires quite a bit of conscious effort to shed. To belong was to be obedient, to do what the tribe needed and wanted, and to make sure we didn’t stand out. But the side effect of this thinking is that by always being preoccupied with how you are perceived, you miss out on the opportunity to really get to know yourself.

who you are exists in the moment, not outside of it

To be truly yourself is to exist fully in the moment, without placing any additional packaging on how you are being seen.

When I started writing, I thought it was going to be much more about discipline, process and routine than it actually is. Not because I don’t have routine (I do), but because that routine tends to reflect what helps me exist fully in the present, rather than following some rigidly prescribed schedule that mostly just makes me feel productive. My routine focuses on presence because presence is the foundation of creativity. And in my case, being creative = being productive. But traditional productivity routines will convince you to focus on doing something all the time, which is usually the opposite of how to be more creative. Being (not doing) needs to be the priority so that ideas can rise up to the surface of your consciousness and give you something worthwhile to do! You can’t brute force the creative process. It is a process that needs to be allowed.

But our (adult) brains are not wired to be present. We are conditioned to always look for the next thing—planning, regretting, reflecting, managing our image or otherwise placing our attention on something outside of where we are. And when we do this, we cannot see our ideas. They get lost in the noise. We do not notice what is right in front of us. Our creative power is stifled—suppressed—by this unrelenting focus we are placing on something outside of ourselves. We are distracted by our minds; we are blocked from releasing our creative power, and ultimately, these distractions block our ability to self-express.

what is self expression?

To me, self-expression is exactly what it sounds like: being yourself, in full expression. It doesn’t need to be some dramatic creation that forces everyone to look at you and say wow! To me, self-expression is being present, paying attention, listening closely, saying what you mean, and engaging with what feels truly alive in whatever medium resonates with you. More generally, I think about self-expression as making the choices that truly come from you (and not what you think others will like). Self-expression is exerting your taste on the world by acting on it.

Self-expression is a way of relating to the world more truthfully. It is a way of showing up as yourself, without inhibition or performance to try and evoke a perception that doesn’t truly reflect who you are. It is a way to communicate through your presence alone. It is a way of BEING! Nothing more, nothing less. And when you become more practiced at this way of being, the ‘doing’ flows naturally from it. You start to live in alignment as a result of being deeply in tune with the moment you are in.

Said differently: the better you become at being present, the more creative you are. This is the ultimate method for releasing what is inside you: dwelling deeply inside of yourself and acting on the energy that rises there. Knowing that what you see, think, feel, and desire are the primary signals to focus on.

How others do or do not respond to your self-expression is not your concern. Both because it is not something you can control, and because it’s not the point. The point is to know yourself deeper. The point is to see what is inside you and watch it come to life. When you start to earnestly and authentically engage in this process, it becomes far more interesting than doing things to please or impress others. Imitation becomes bland and unoriginal and getting to know yourself better becomes the new source of novelty! Because when you are self-expressing, what you do is no longer a repurposed version of something you saw from someone else that you thought you should do. It is what you like. What you resonate with. And what you want to express.

but how do we become more present?

What blocks us from being present are the old thought patterns that take us out of the moment and make us self-conscious, distracted, or worried about the future or the past. The challenge with old thought patterns is that you can’t white-knuckle yourself out of having them. You can’t force yourself to be present. It needs to be allowed.

One effective tool in freeing ourselves from these old thought patterns is simply bringing love to them. Because whatever your mind is distracting you with is probably its effort to protect you (even though it might not be doing the best job in your current context). For whatever reason, your mind thinks that the wise thing to do is to be tense; to protect, posture, perform. You may know consciously that there is a better way for you to be.

But if you can understand your mind and see that it is doing its best, then you can forgive it; and if you can forgive it for taking you away from where you are, then you can liberate your mind to come back to where you are.

This could also be called healing: nursing old wounds that take you away from the moment, from being fully conscious where you are. Wholeness allows you to be present, which allows you to see what is alive for you in any moment and then ultimately create it.

to be creative is to be comfortable with yourself

You may have noticed that the people who seem to be most comfortable self-expressing are also pretty comfortable with themselves, period. They are not hiding, they are not trying to protect certain parts of themselves from being seen. And because they are comfortable with themselves, they can create honestly. They can self-express without inhibition. They can be where they are and manifest what they see. I wrote about this in how to be cool—this idea that being cool is just being yourself, and because it is so hard for people to be themselves, when they see someone doing it, they think: wow, that’s cool. Being yourself means not hiding! And not hiding means being okay with being seen, being okay with everyone knowing who you are—a scary thought if you still haven’t accepted yourself.

self-expression is healing

Creativity has healing power. It has the ability to make you comfortable being seen. It has the capacity to get you out of your head and into your body, in touch with your soul. The more you practice gently soothing and releasing those thoughts that tell you to contract, the more free you are to create what appears to you in the moment, and the more creatively liberated you become.

When you heal the inner wounds that take you away from where you are (mostly the things you don’t like about yourself), the safer you feel to be as you are. And isn’t that what we are all after? Simply feeling comfortable enough in our own skin to say what we think, wear what we like, make what feels interesting to us, and let ourselves be seen.

But before all that can happen, you first need to start loving what pulls you away — healing it with attention and care — instead of resenting it and being frustrated with it. Because when you can start feeling ease, tenderness and gratitude towards what pulls you away—when you can soothe those old thought patterns instead of resist them—you can begin to meet yourself as you are right now, which creates the space for you to self-express.

unblock yourself to liberate your creativity

Unblocking yourself is a process of noticing when you are not placing your attention where you wish to and bringing yourself back, slowly, tenderly and with love. This practice gets more refined the better you get at noticing that you are blocked/distracted in the first place. If you can notice when you feel yourself managing how you want to be perceived, you have arrived at an opportunity to unblock yourself! An opportunity to understand where that comes from, to bring love towards what is tensing up within you, and to simply remind yourself that you are safe to be here, where you are right now, as yourself. To liberate yourself from what no longer serves you—and from what blocks you from being in this moment fully—so you can unlock your own capacity to self-express and live congruently in the world, in alignment with yourself. This is, after all, exactly how you become cool: not by trying to be anyone else, but by simply being yourself. Which is also, as it turns out, where all of your best ideas will come from. Everything flows from presence. So, if you want to feel more in touch with yourself, your ideas and your taste, start by healing what takes you away from the moment. It isn’t always about doing more, sometimes it’s about simply being where you are, without an agenda. Because it is often when we are totally present, without any attachment to producing anything, that our best ideas come through.

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Related essays: avoidance & expression, don’t let your ideas rot, unblocking the mind, letting myself be seen