creative risk management

what if you don’t have to push yourself?

Let’s say there’s art you want to make and share with the world. Let’s say it feels like a terrible idea because the groceries won’t pay for themselves or because someone’s gonna hate it (maybe someone whose opinion you care about, maybe not) or you’re not sure you’re any good and everyone’s gonna laugh at you or [insert your very valid reason here].

Let’s say you’ve been busy trying (and maybe failing spectacularly) to earn a living and you’re realizing your living won’t always be there to earn.

Let’s say you decide it’s time to make the damn art anyway.

Maybe you set aside time to make some art, but your butt never makes it to the chair or even if it does your brain can’t focus on the art because your very valid reasons for avoiding your art haven’t disappeared.

Or maybe you put your butt in the chair and you make some art. Maybe you think some of it’s good. Maybe you think some of it’s meant to be shared. Maybe that makes every muscle in your throat constrict.

You’ve tried the Pomodoro Timer, and the affirmations you don’t believe, and rewriting your negative beliefs so they’re positive and you guess it helps a bit, but...why is it still so fucking hard?

Your nervous system has sensed a threat and it’s doing what nervous systems do. And maybe your nervous system is a little (or a lot) hyperreactive. And maybe you’re resigned to that after years of people telling you to “just relax.”

And then one day maybe someone tells you it doesn’t have to stay that way. Maybe the exhausting cha-cha of take a baby step and shrink back for longer than you’d want anyone to know isn’t the only way to move toward your desires.

They tell you about this concept called “the window of tolerance.” When we’re in our window of tolerance, we can handle the things life hurls at us and the challenges we choose to tackle. Things like experiencing trauma and health issues and living in a society designed to crush your spirit into something someone can profit of off can narrow the window. And…

Here’s the important bit: there are things you can do to widen it. We’ll talk about that next week.

But for today, if you’re struggling with something you “should be able to do,” I’d like to invite you to consider: you’re not weak or lazy or sabotaging yourself or not trying hard enough. Your nervous system has sensed a threat and it’s doing what nervous systems do.

Until then,

Ryn

President of The Creative Courage Club

New here? If you could use regular reminders to let your playful, artistic, creative self take up space—that don’t gloss over the ways that’s hard, I write The Creative Courage Project for you:

While learning about trauma-informed practices, Eryka Peskin recommended the book Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma by Elizabeth A. Stanley PhD. When I read the line: “By engaging and repeating certain mental processes—consciously or unconsciously—the brain becomes more efficient at those processes,” I realized my brain was extremely efficient at always presuming storms, but there were things I could do to make it efficient at other things. I could widen my window of tolerance. The storms could lift.