“Remember you only have two choices as a creator. Make excuses or make art.”

This was said by the phenomenally talented and…well, creative, photography-leading artist Chase Jarvis.

I could just end the blog post here (🎤 drop!), but I want to say more.

The crossroads on the road of your thoughts, feelings, and emotions — where you can either bottle them up til you are red in the face, get diseased, and get massive road rage…or express, transform, transmute, and speak it into the Universe in some way, shape, form, speed, and package; this…this is where a creative is defined.

I used to tell clients (and I still would, I just don’t do training as a main gig anymore):
‣ “if you run, you are a runner”
‣ “if you ski, you are a skier”
‣ “if you meditate, you are a meditator”
‣ “if you bike, you are a biker”
‣ “if you lift weights, you are a lifter”

Basically, akin to James Clear’s (The “Habit Master”) philosophy: “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”

I’ll be careful here: what you do is not your identity; but it is a LARGE component of it. Here on the Earth plane, I do mean.

I would offer this perspective to clients to both tame their anxiety about crossing over the daunting hump of work it could take to become all of those above things as well as to encourage them to see the identity of (fill in the blank) that already existed inside of them. Like a bunch of latent genes that sit in each of our human cells and can be turned on by environmental factors (a field called epigenetics), I like to believe that a bunch of latent identities sit in each of our human psyches and somas and can be turned on by any f*cking action.

So I wasn't dishing out bullshit. I truly believed it and still do: if you do the thing, you are the thing (I’m talking about identities).

So, getting back to the question: what does it take to be a creative?

It only takes one thing to be a creative: acting creatively.

It’s in deciding which way you will go at that crossroads, over and over again.

The crossroads where you could express your deep-seated, soul belief or societies’ mainstream belief.

The crossroads where you could express your anger towards your mother or you could keep your lips sealed because speaking up might rattle her*.

The crossroads where you could express your interpretation and vision of the world (with something as simple as dressing in the way that inspires you) or you could button up your style to stay tucked into the shadows of society.

Renowned addiction expert, speaker author Dr. Gabor Maté calls this crossroads “the tragic tension between authenticity and acceptance.” He teaches that sometimes our needs for attachment are threatened by our authenticity — our connection to what we truly feel. As kids, we made mandatory choices to belong and be accepted when we may have felt like going the other way, disagreed with the commonplace, or just needed a different way of receiving love.

Tragic but true, he says: “As children, we learn to sacrifice authenticity for connection. Done mostly unconsciously, our body’s intelligence recognizes that if we are our full, vibrant self, we’ll lose the attachment with our parents. We may lose any semblance of a relationship at all.”

The stakes are simply too high. As Abraham Maslow would say, we would not be able to evolve, mature, prosper, and thrive (ever have a chance of self-actualizing), if we didn’t have our basic physiological, safety, belonging, and esteem needs fulfilled.

The creative, then, has the responsibility to interact with the world in a way such that their “basic needs” are met so s/he/they can choose authenticity over acceptance.

The creative chooses authenticity over acceptance.

The paradox being, by blazing her own trail, she often attracts the tribe she always yearned for.

Back to the way I described the action-identity relationship to my training clients back in the day, the creative’s gateway action is anything that expresses authenticity.

I would go as far as to say that being a Creative is synonymous with being an Authentic Human Being.

You may have thought I was going to riff on how to make better paintings, write better novels, enhance your latté or balloon art, or become a better spoken word poet.

But nah, being a Creative is SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT.

Look deep into your soul and what do you find?
If you can express the courage to bring that into life, you are a Creative.

Much Love,

Abby

*Children and women have been conditioned to be “yes” people and inauthentically agree with authority when they feel unsafe or unresourced to speak their truth.

What Does It Take To Be A Creative?