I have been reading The Creative Act: A Way of Being
by the music producer Rick Rubin
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.
