The Creative Act-Self Doubt

I have been reading The Creative Act: A Way of Being by the music producer Rick Rubin (Rick Rubin 2023). His book is garnering a lot of attention amongst artists as Rick Rubin is very well regarded in the music world. Rubin writes about what he knows: how to be creative. He wrote 78 short but memorable essays which makes up the book. I have just started reading and already I am putting certain essays through my mental filter and interpreting them as lessons, broadened their scope, and applying them to my experiences as an engineer, educator, and coach. Here is a reflection on Self Doubt and How to Deal with Self-doubt.(pages 73 and 77 in the book.)

When humans do human things: create art, practice to better ourselves, be passionate about what we do; we always put our inner most intimate selves into those efforts.  If we did not put all of ourselves into our doings, the results just wouldn't resonate. If we did anything dispassionately and in procedural way, the saliency of what we produce, whether it is tangible or ephemeral would not excite us, nor anyone else. Each artist is different, and each artist has their experiences, backgrounds and viewpoints to draw upon, which is what makes their creations unique. Art reflects who we are as people. The act of the artists putting their innermost intimate selves into their act of creativity is what defines their art as unique.

Rubin also states that making art is not a competitive sport, which is why art is a representative of the self. When someone has self-doubt or precedes the art making with the caveat that  they are not up to the challenge of creating their vision; the effort is defeated before it began, for no one else could be up to the challenge of creating the artist’s vision. We can only be ourselves. We cannot be someone else. We are the only one with our voice. This is also a part of what makes the creative artist’s temperament so delicate. It is also because of this delicacy that many who attempt to do art have great difficulties exposing their inner selves to the world. The sensitivity which allows them to make art is the same reason that makes them more vulnerable to being judged. Those who can overcome those fears and self-doubt, those who are able and willing to  expose their fears and overcome their self-doubts to the world are the ones that the world recognizes. As Rubin states in his essay: the one thing that the artist needs to recognize is that adversity is a part of the creative process. Adversity is a necessary part of what makes their art unique and memorable.

Rubin also points out that most successful artists are often deeply insecure and self-sabotaging. He asserts that this is because artists see tremendous beauty or tremendous pain where others see little or nothing at all, they're confronted with big feelings all the time. These emotions can be confusing and overwhelming. When those around us don't see what we see and feel what we feel, it can lead to a sense of isolation and not belonging, of otherness.

I made the connection with what Rubin is saying about artists and with what I experienced with my students and players: feelings of self-doubt, insecurity, self-sabotaging, isolation, not belonging, and otherness. While most of the college students I teach are better at hiding behind the adult veil, the younger players are more transparent. Their age and level of maturity can boost or undermine their self-confidence, but their self-doubt can be devastating to them in theor formative ages. This is not to say that young players are creative artists at heart, but they behave the same way as the artists in Rubin’s reckoning.

I was interested in seeing how Rubin advises artists in dealing with their self-doubts, especially in seeing how his ideas align with my thoughts and more importantly, how his ideas can be applied to those students and players that I am trying to reach.

The insidious and intimate relationship between self-doubt and creativity makes working with those with self-doubt perilous. Self-doubt prevents artists from taking chances and playing, creatively and fearlessly, as they need to do; while being creative emboldens artists, stoking their belief in themselves and their abilities. The two are inseparable.

One strategy that Rubin proposes is to deliberately lower the stakes in their minds. Rubin’s idea is to create a more nuanced relationship with the artist’s expectations. The idea is to divide the expectations into smaller pieces, to think about the impact of the creative work as a small part of the whole, that the most immediate challenge is a piece of the chain that will lead to bigger things; the lowered expectations lead to diminished levels of fear, and  by implication, lowers the weight of the perceived consequences of failure and lessens the self-doubt. The focus is on the immediate mission to complete the work which leads to progress towards the next mission, and the next. The purpose is to continue forward in a productive rhythm. Lowering the stakes also means that the artist can give themselves room to play, as lowered expectation gives the artist a reason to not playing to win, they are playing to play, and playing is fun and should not create more self-doubt.

Self-doubt will often encourage, if not outright light the fire for an unquenchable perfectionism streak which ultimately gets in the way of having fun, satiating curiosities, and experimenting. Perfectionism fills the void created by self-doubt: if I am not good enough then I will make up for my inadequacies with my efforts to be perfect. Oscar Wilde once said that some things are just too important to be taken seriously. The antidote, setting the bar low, frees the artist to play, explore, and test their creative urges without attachment to the results. This is not just a path to more supportive thoughts, active play, and experimentation; it is the path to being creative and original.

Even though Rubin’s assertion that art is not a competitive sport help lower the stakes for the artists, it becomes an obstacle for the analogy that I am drawing: students who are studying at a university with an eye focused squarely on potential employment or a player learning to play a sport which has the competitive ethos deeply ingrained.

University students are indoctrinated to view their future employment opportunities as a win-loss scenario, that their future employment and earning powers all revolve around their ability to compete in the classroom. This is a mythology perpetuated by employers and universities to motivate the students, but more importantly, it places burden on and preys on the student through their irrational fears of the unknown.

I acknowledge that any college graduate hoping to enter into the work force should demonstrate excellence in their knowledge; but it isn’t dependent strictly on their cumulative grades, the artificial metric which they focus on as the basis of their competitiveness that will determine their future; rather, it is on their ability to think, solve problems, and make intelligent decisions that determines their future employment. It was not that long ago that the tech companies touted a more equitable employment market, where credentials like college degrees no longer matter. Their focus is on the worker’s ability to think, solve problems, make intelligent decisions, and their ability to learn essential new skillsets on the fly that will determine the desirability of the candidates to the employers. There are many salient examples in the tech world which illustrates that not having the credentials does not hinder their ability to be creative.

My approach for my students is to counter their ingrained belief in the win-loss with the win-win, that their academic efforts should be on learning, that having the knowledge should be primary purpose and the grades will result naturally. My class assessments are geared towards assessing learning, not grading on a strict scale. I am not sure about how successful I am, but that is my goal with my students.

In the case of the junior athlete, not only are they surrounded by the ethos of the competitive sports environment, but they also live in the very real adolescent world of sturm und drang with a healthy dose of angst and drama added liberally atop of it all. They believe that whatever it is that they do is the most important thing in existence at that moment, which will also define them for all eternity,

Our sporting culture dictates to them that they must compete for their spot in the lineup, as they are involved in an activity, sports, which is defined by competition. Everyone, family, coaches, teammates, next door neighbors, strangers on the street are constantly hectoring them to compete. So how do I, as the coach, lower the stakes and dilute the expectations? One thing I can do to reward improvement, comparing their present performance with their immediate previous performance rather than anchoring the comparison on some pre-conceived norm. For one thing, I am not that good at determining whether that pre-conceived norm is realizable; for another, if it is not realizable with a specific group of athletes, that comparison will serve to deflate their motivation.

Another thing I do is to allow them space to experiment to retrieve their newly gained knowledge for as often as it takes each individual, which entails patience. The “space” I refer to comes in many forms: some may need “space” in the form of time, or gaps in time to process; some may need “space” in the form of silence from the teacher, to make connections by working through their neuronal processing themselves without feedback; some may need “space” in the form of a reprieve from external pressure and judgement. The true challenge for the coach is to balance the needs of the individual against the needs of the team. How do we keep the faster learners challenged while also helping those who are behind to catch up? I can’t say I have any magic, each case is different; I experiment and play with the context and parameters. Sometimes I am successful, sometimes I am not. When I am not, I need to practice what I preach, to not doubt myself.

In the context of a situation where competition is at the core of the activity, there is space to lower the expectations without falsely devaluating the integrity of the activity. The way I have chosen to operate most often is to refocus the competitiveness to that of strengthening the core of the practice rather than focusing on the obvious scoring metrics. It gives those who have self-doubt to improve and alleviate self-doubt while also taking the focus off the customary points of measurements. This emphasis on the practice of their art improves those parts of their practice that gives them self-doubt while also alleviating the self-doubt. Win-win.

Another way Rubin proposes to overcome self-doubt and insecurity is to give the cause of self-doubt and insecurity a name. Rubin talks about the Buddhist concept of Papantla, which translates to preponderance of thoughts. This refers to the very human reaction to stressful experiences by allowing an avalanche of mental chatter. Whatever our own symptoms of self-doubt, once we have identified them, and have given it a name, it becomes easier to recognize while acknowledging its existence, which makes it easier for us to move beyond the symptoms of self-doubt.

Self-doubt is a manifestation of fear. It is fear of not being good enough, a fear of seeming foolish or inadequate. One way that Rubin proposes to face fear is to just mentally imagine stopping doing what we fear; whether it is to do art, to go to university, or to play a sport. Tell ourselves that we don't ever have to do this again. Just stop. If it's not making us happy, it's our choice. Once that load is off, once that pressure of expectation is relieved, we now have permission to try something new and to look at our circumstances with fresh eyes. Realize our new perspective and be thankful about how fortunate we are to be in a position to make that choice on our own. This realization that we chose of our own preference, rather than not being allowed to choose, might tip the balance on whether we are willing to face the fears and how weighty those fears are. If we thought that what we are doing as a privilege rather than a mundane routine, maybe those fears may not be so daunting. Ultimately, our desire must be greater than our fear.

Once the decision is made to accept self-doubt rather than to eliminate or endure it, the meaning of self-doubt is lessened, and our own reaction to it is also lessened because realizing that self-doubt is not as important as our reaction to it.

Rubin also brings up a finer point, which has to do with the kind of doubt that we are experiencing. We must differentiate between doubting our work or doubting ourselves because that nuanced difference is critical. Doubting the work is expressed by the statements: I don't know if what I did was good enough, the quality of what I do is not as good as I want or as I can do. Doubting ourselves is expressed by: I am terrible, I can't do this, or I am hopelessly out of my depth. They are worlds apart in truth but in close proximity in our thoughts and emotions. Doubting ourselves can lead to a sense of hopelessness, of believing that we are not fit to do what we are doing. It is all or nothing. Doubting ourselves should be a nonstarter but doubting the quality of what we are doing is a constructive path. It is a part of that process, it is a means to an end, it is a quality check on our practice, our execution, our learned skill. We are allowed to doubt our work; we are using the failure of our attempts to improve how we do what we do. The work is not about perfection. The imperfections that we attempt to fix might prove to be what makes the work great. Sometimes it doesn't work that way, but we rarely know what makes it great and what makes it not so great, we can only do it by playing, experimenting, and defying our fears. Sometimes pondering why, which is a central question that we ask ourselves while mired in self-doubt, is beyond our comprehension. We need to embrace our imperfections. Whatever insecurities we have can be reframed as a guiding force in our creativity. Self-doubt only becomes a hindrance when they buttress the resistance to our ability to share what's closest to our heart. Yet we can and should make that same self-doubt the basis of our being creative and making ourselves better.

As we all know, it is difficult mentally to overcome self-doubt, Rubin gives us some mental twists in turning our reaction to the adversity of self-doubt from negative to positive. There is nothing guaranteed, there is just a desire to apply the lessons.      

Reference

Rick Rubin, Neil Strauss. The Creative Act: A Way if Being. New York City: Penguin Press, 2023.