Leadership As A Creative Act + The Problem With Depression

In an article written by my brilliant friend Dahlia Lithwick, one line stood out to me above all the others: “Widespread public despair is a strategy.”

Her article is about the past few weeks in politics, yes, but so much more.?

She goes on to quote a Wired article from 2019 by Laurie Penny and “what happens to our minds when we become hopelessly depressed.”?

From Penny: "One of the symptoms reported most frequently by people with severe depressive illness is lack of ability to imagine the future. It’s not just that they can’t imagine anything good happening ever again—they can’t imagine a future at all. The psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, in his pioneering research on the effects of sustained trauma, showed patients the famous Rorschach inkblots test. He discovered that people who were not traumatized could imagine all sorts of pictures in the random patterns, good and bad—flowers, monsters, murders. What did the traumatized people imagine? Nothing. They imagined nothing. They looked at blobs of ink and saw blobs of ink. Trauma and depression confiscate your imaginative capacity. Including your capacity to imagine a way out of trauma and depression.”

I would like to add, though, that it’s not only about the hopelessly depressed, as any artist knows on any given down day. To imagine nothing is to be disconnected from our meaning, purpose, vision - but most of all, our expanded consciousness. Every degree of depression means we are that much more shut down to the widely expanded worldview that is available through consciousness.?Small disconnects matter, too.

Make no mistake - leadership is a journey of creativity.?

How to lead, how to help others, how to garner enough attention to be listened to, how to make difficult decisions, how to take the heat, how to find an honorable way forward… it’s all creativity. In fact, I would go so far as to say that a leader who is not creating isn’t a leader at all.

Recently a client of mine - one who feels she is not overly creative - described how she worked with a problem. She said she didn’t know what to do, she mulled it over and set it aside, felt worried and bad and not up to the task, and then, after several days, and right when needed, an idea came to her. Rather, it came out of her mouth without thinking. It was a great idea, surprising her and her team because it came from out of left field.?

I told her that this is the creative process. It’s how creativity works. She was unconsciously creative. As are many leaders.?

You don’t only make art as a creative being.?

You make a new world for others to live in. Beautifully.?At least, I hope you do.

So here I am, calling all creative leaders who don’t think they are. Use your ideas for a better world. And if you cannot think of any, consider it may not be a lack of creativity, but a sign of depression.?

By the way, there’s no shame in experiencing depression. We’re all a little depressed these days, given how our snarky media seems to tell us at every turn that our world is on fire. It’s just that it would be a shame if any of us a little too lost to it didn’t get help.?

What I would say to all leaders - the same thing I say to the leaders I work with - is that you are not wrong to wonder if there is a conspiracy toward hopelessness and depression. It's everywhere, and when you peel back the layers, you can see it baked into our culture.

Yet as with all aspects of unconsciousness, the remedy is consciousness.

Call it out. See it spreading in the media. Remember why you came into leadership in the first place. Realize that the depression is not yours, but ours.?Work with it, because we need your conscious creativity.

Excavate it. Use it.?

I’m here. You’re here. We will.

Hi! I'm Robin Rice. Please connect. Also, join me for Stories About Stories, a book-on-podcast that is designed to help you work through your own life stories and how you tell them. You'll find it on any of your favorite podcast platforms. You can also sign up at BeWhoYouAre.com to get my Sunday Story Prompts. Also, for more encouragement, read Dahlia Lithwick.?