The Practice

Don’t ever tell yourself, “I can’t be creative.” You can. And, in fact, you already are. Every time you’ve doodled in the corner of a notebook or hummed a song in the shower, you’ve expressed yourself creatively. 

You have the capacity for creativity and for transforming your raw creative ability into professional practice. But be prepared: the route to establishing yourself as a creative professional can be tricky to navigate. There’s no predetermined roadmap to professional creative success.

As the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, puts it: “It is better to follow your own path, however imperfectly, than to follow someone else’s perfectly.”

The key message is: Trust yourself to find your own path to a creative practice.

So how do you find your creative path? Your path lies in your process. Trust in your process, and your path will manifest itself.

But that trust might be hard won. Ours is a world that values outcome over process. We don’t judge a plumber’s work by the quality of its process; we judge it based on whether or not the toilet still leaks. Sadly, many apply this same attitude to creative endeavors. We judge the success of a book by the copies it sells, the success of a musician by how many stadiums she can sell out. 

But fixating on outcome can lead creatives to make shallow, market-driven choices. The fact is, there’s no such thing as an outcome without a process leading up to it. To find your authentic creativity, focus on your own creative process, which naturally will be different than anyone else’s. By trusting in your own unique process without placing value on its outcome, you’ll discover your path. 

Of course, it’s sometimes hard to trust process. You might feel the guitar notes you’re strumming will never meld into a harmony, or the sentences you’re jotting down on your commute will never amount to a book. Even the most established creative practitioners confess to feeling overwhelmed by self-doubt. But here’s the good news: Your feelings don’t matter. Your actions do. 

Unlike our feelings, our actions are within our control. So, do your process, even if you feel like you can’t.

Trust in yourself; trust in your process. Sometimes your process will result in a good outcome. Sometimes it won’t. But every time you recommit to it, you recommit to uncovering your creative potential.