The Courage to Create

When survival is threatened, creativity can be viewed as inessential or impossible to attain. And yet that’s when creativity in all its forms is most powerful and necessary. Our philosophy at Science House is that creativity is everywhere. Sure, sometimes the muse comes to bless us with a flash of what feels like divine inspiration. But for everyone else--whether you’re writing code or books, painting houses or portraits or creating clarity in your opus or a business plan--creativity requires discipline and, above all else, courage. 

And courage doesn’t just mean fighting an adversary. Sometimes it can be as simple as taking a couple of hours for yourself in the middle of a workday to plant a garden, as I did today.

While doing this manual labor that seemingly has nothing to do with my job as co-director of Science House, the idea for this post came to me, inspired by one of my favorite books, The Courage to Create, by Rollo May, adapted here for thinking in about new ways of working, whether you work for yourself or a multinational corporation. 

Creativity can be applied to everything, from complex ideas about infinity to clearing bureaucratic clutter to give people space to think, innovate and grow. Further, creativity is demanded for true systemic change and the evolution of humanity. Without it, we will not achieve our highest ideals. Through the prism of The Courage to Create mixed with my own thoughts, this process has five components: 

• Encounters in a shared language
• Well designed plans that clearly establish limits
• Acceptance of and struggle against limits
• Continuous transformation of imagination into form
• A compelling shared narrative that continuously fuels the process

This post begins by defining creative courage and then explores the core components listed above.  

Creative Courage

The Courage to Create illuminates a framework for thinking about creative courage. While the book is about the role of courage required by artists engaged in the creative process, the same approach applies perfectly to the business challenges faced by companies today, and the struggle of all of us to stay in touch with our own creativity in a chaotic world. 

New ideas can simplify, enhance or topple established systems as they come into reality. This can be very challenging for the people who have successfully established those systems. This is true in large companies, and it is also true in our own lives. Our brains are amazing in lots of ways, but they are also lazy and looking to conserve calories for their sole mission: survival. Masterful creativity is the struggle to birth something new and powerful that didn’t previously exist. For this reason, creativity requires courage. You are asking your brain to reach its highest state, not just the comfortable place it wants you to stay so it can manage your survival and look for real threats. Creativity has the power to cause anxiety as it dismantles old ways of being and doing. 

Encounter is at the core of every creative act

After a year plus of absent encounters for many people, this muscle has atrophied. We need to give ourselves space to ease back into the ebb and flow of our social lives again, whether at work or play. And we do need to play more. One of the main tenets of the Imagination Age is a return to who we were before the world started imprinting itself on us. There’s no shame in rekindling the passions you had as a child before the artificial hierarchy of social life started to create an illusion of who you think you should be and how others see you instead of WHO YOU ARE. Every encounter should be infused with your authentic spirit. 

Social courage

...The courage to relate to other human beings, the capacity to risk one’s self... It is the courage to invest one’s self over a period of time in a relationship that will demand an increasing openness.

Social courage requires the confrontation of fear. When confronted, the participant “develops the awareness that one grows not only by being one’s self but also by participating.” Practicing this idea requires giving up control. It requires a clear sighted path to the value of true inclusion. People must abandon some of their previously successful ways of working to meet the demands of the future and shape new systems. They will be required to develop new skills. One of the best ways to tell if you have social courage is to take note of how you feel when you get defensive. You do not need to react in the moment when you feel threatened or challenged. Allow yourself to learn and revisit a conversation, idea or change once you’ve had time to look at your own reactions. 

Strategy to execution 

In order to become real, a future vision hatched in the imagination must be continuously translated into tangible form. Creative masters continuously execute knowing what they produce on any given day, in any moment, might be mediocre or downright awful. It’s a discipline. How do you get from mediocre to remarkable? By giving yourself room to play. To relax. To experience life. To let the ideas come the way they do in the shower or on a walk. 

The process of developing a collaborative culture of creative courage has five components, emphasized again here:

• Encounters in a shared language
• Well designed plans that clearly establish limits
• Acceptance of and struggle against limits
• Continuous transformation of imagination into form
• A compelling shared narrative that continuously fuels the process

“A choice confronts us,” Rollo May wrote. “Shall we, as we feel our foundations shaking, withdraw in anxiety and panic? Frightened by the loss of our familiar mooring places, shall we become paralyzed and cover our inaction with apathy? If we do those things, we will have surrendered our chance to participate in forming the future.”

Encounters in a shared language

Is there some place where reality speaks our language if we understand the hieroglyphics?

Tell yourself what it is you are trying to accomplish and be clear about WHY. Speak directly to yourself. Strive for simplicity. Creative masters are distinguished in part by their ability to live with anxiety. They do not run away, but rather wrestle with encounter until meaning results. It is important to remember that emergence is often experienced as an emergency to those who are experiencing it, even when the outcome promises an improved future state.

Well designed plans that clearly establish limits

Clearly articulated limits are the key boundaries against which the creative encounter struggles to bring something new into being. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt. To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment.

Competing priorities and limitations exist. Passion is infinite and time is finite, so clarifying competing priorities to chart a path forward is a necessary step. 

Acceptance of limits and struggling against them

Once limits are clearly articulated, creative people enter encounters that enable a struggle against them. Those limits are meant to be explored and even shattered. From this process, true creativity emerges and imagination begins to transform into tangible outcomes. It is critical to make sure that the focus on the big picture stays sharp and vividly articulated. This is true for individuals and for large groups of people working together on shared goals.  

Continuous transformation of imagination into form

This brings us to the most important kind of courage of all. Creative courage is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built. Every profession can and does require some creative courage. In our day, technology and engineering, diplomacy, business, and certainly teaching, all of these professions and scores of others are in the midst of radical change and require courageous persons to appreciate and direct this change. The need for creative courage is in direct proportion to the degree of change the profession is undergoing.

How can a new vision be communicated in a way that the audience for which it is intended won’t instantly reject it? You make it relevant to them--not from your perspective, but from theirs. If you can capture their attention by making it relevant to them, then people will energetically respond with commitment and understanding. From the nebulous realm of possibility, very specific forms must begin to take shape or the very people who will benefit from the ideas will never see them born into their reality, much less have the opportunity to understand how they might have contributed.

A compelling narrative that continuously fuels the process

Creativity is difficult in part because it isn’t easy to “clear away the dead forms.” On top of that, the cleared forms need to be replaced with tangible evidence of what will replace them. Even when a story is beautifully articulated and communicated, even when it promises a better future, it will cause anxiety in listeners if they don’t immediately understand how it is relevant to them and what’s in it for them if they accept the challenge of committing to the journey ahead.  

Genuine creativity is characterized by an intensity of awareness, a heightened consciousness. In complete absorption and flow comes an increased capacity for problem solving. It is humanity’s highest calling, the realization of imagination into a more perfect world. We need to tell ourselves the best story we can and work to make it true.