Creative Path, Part I — Cultivating Awareness
There was a time when people used to say I was a restless soul, never happy with what I have, and always thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. It used to make me agitated. It lowered my self-esteem and made me question myself. Sometimes I thought they might be right but as I kept meeting people around the world, reading books, watching movies, growing older and experiencing life, I realized that this restlessness was my blessing. It kept my curiosity alive, nourished my desire to grow and learn as much as I could and made me understand and see the world around me with fresh eyes. Eventually, I changed my own story about my restlessness and restored my self-esteem. I made that restlessness the source of everything I wanted to share with people who are willing to listen.
external impulse —> reaction —> failure —> lesson —> next external impulse —> reaction —> success —> repeat
Self-awareness is found in that empty space between what you receive from the outside world and how you react to it. A bad reaction to impulses leads to failure, a good one leads to success. How you react depends entirely on how well you know your strengths and limitations. It’s sort of the bridge between reality and intuition. The more you cultivate it, the easier it becomes to make the right decisions.
Self-awareness has served me best in those moments whenever fear knocked on my door and an opportunity presented itself. That’s when desire tries to lock that same door because it’s just so much easier to stay where I’m at. But before I let desire take over I try to create that space in time and look deep inside myself to see what I’ve learned from the past.
As Einstein famously said:
If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.
Think before you act. First, I want to know why exactly I so badly need to embark on that journey. Then, I’m going to try and imagine a picture as close as possible to the place I want to get to and finally, create a road map to get there.
WHY
When I was a child, everything looked amazing and wondrous in my eyes. There were no limits to my imagination and I could escape for hours into a world I made up wherever I was. But then I grew up and suddenly people started telling me that the world is the way it is and that my job is just to live my life inside this world: ‘Try not to bash into any walls, have a nice family life, some fun, save a little money…’ Fitting in meant stopping to wonder ‘why’!
I think that’s a very limited life. Isn’t everything around us that we call life made up by people just like you and me? We can embrace life and change it, improve it, influence it and leave our mark.
Maybe our only purpose is to figure out that one thing that makes us tick and start ticking away. You’ve probably heard it a million times: start with the why! Simon Sinek has wrapped it around a golden circle, Viktor Frankl has made it the basis of his most enduring insight into human psychology. The true worth of these 3 simple letters becomes apparent when trouble comes around. Knowing our why sets in motion a mechanism that starts building that resilience I’ve been rambling about. My ‘raison-d’être’ reminds me why I’m in this journey at those moments when I get dropped to my knees and find it really hard to keep further investing energy, resources and risk in the process. There were many times I just gave up, not because I had to, but because I didn’t have that thick skin that grows out of a clear and deep understanding of the reasons why this mattered so much. Because I didn’t find that resilience within me to resist the longing of just giving up and going back to what I already knew.
Here are a few questions that helped me to get clear of my ‘raison-d'être’:
- Why does it matter to you?
- Why is it meaningful?
- Why would it matter to others?
- Why does it matter to you, that it matters to others?
It’s also helpful to look at the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what you can get paid for and what the world needs. The Japanese called this intersection the IKIGAI, translated as ‘reason-for-being’.
IMAGE
Here comes the fun part because that’s where you really are going to travel inward. Find a comfortable seat, close your eyes and simply picture what your ideal outcome looks like. There are no limits to your imagination. Add as many details as possible and think about the qualities of your experience being your future self doing what you love. How do you spend your time, with whom and where? Use all your senses when imagining your ideal future. How do you want to feel?
While looking for my own image, it took me a few iterations during several weeks before I had the clarity of where I wanted to go. This clarity doesn’t always come just through thinking or daydreaming. In fact, my most revealing moments occurred when I was not thinking at all (I will talk about these techniques when we get to the 3rd theme of ‘Practices’). The process of imagining our future charges our brain with a sort of ‘automated attention mechanism’ which will subconsciously direct our awareness to wherever we need to go. By feeding our lizard brain with the necessary guidance, it can start doing its thing. Paulo Coelho wrote about this phenomenon in the Alchemist, when he was saying that ‘the universe will conspire to help you achieve anything you set your mind on’.
Even if you don’t really know what the specifics are of that picture, you can come up with tangible qualities. What important qualities does that future have? How do your values translate into that picture? Over time, through a process of taking action, these elements and details you were lacking will start to reveal themselves and you will be able to build around them.
The following questions can help you to get started:
- What kind of life would you like to have in the coming months, year and 5 years?
- What kind of people do you want to hang out with?
- What do you believe to be capable of in life?
- What do you wish you could change about the world?
- What would you like others to say once you’re gone?
ROAD MAP
When thinking about my next adventure I rarely plan anything ahead. I only know why I want to go there and I vaguely outline the possible directions I could take in case I’m disappointed. I like to be surprised by the people I meet or the insights I get along the way and I tend to rely heavily on my own intuition when it comes to choosing the next destination. This strategy has never let me down. Following a guide or a travel blog and just going to the places it recommends seems like a dull thing to do because everyone is different and we are all looking to discover different things on our trips.
Planning your goals as an independent creator is just done the same way, only this time you’re creating a road map for a tour around the world.
The people that succeed in life always do so because they’ve discovered something they have to offer that nobody else can. But looking at someone else’s success and doing exactly the same thing guarantees failure. So I came up with my own set of rules and schedule that works for me. I mean, why would I want to live for the rest of my life according to a schedule that someone else decided for me? I might as well sign an employment contract and start a 9 to 5.
I needed a system that accommodated my priorities, needs and resources. A customized plan that is responsive and dynamic to who I am and the way I live my everyday life. Not everyone travels at the same pace. Budgets restrict some people and others are slowed down because they are not travelling solo. Take a broad look at the plan you are creating and ask yourself if it fits the life you live, the time you have available, the resources you have, etc. This obviously requires you to understand your basic needs and priorities and to weave your plan around those.
Designing a plan of action works the same way as preparing a travel itinerary with the following 3 elements:
1. chunks — travelling the world seems like a huge undertaking but I don’t let the size of the challenge throw me down. Start at the end and work back to the beginning by dividing your plan into pieces. Make each piece as small as possible to help reduce the stakes and avoid paralysis, fear and anxiety about the immensity of the challenge. And don’t forget to leave enough space in between the chunks for when things go sideways.
2. reflection time — everyone who has travelled for long periods knows that you always need some days to recover from the continuous flow of new things and experiences. The same happens when you’re building your dream. So, we want to plan in regular intervals or time for reflection where we can step back and zoom out to see how we’re doing in a very objective way. A sort of check-in mechanism which allows us to identify that we are making progress. This allows us to ask ourselves what’s going on when we’re stuck and to monitor progress.
This reflection time is important because research shows that seeing regular small bits of progress can be massively motivating in staying on track and not giving up. Another reason is that we have this built-in survival instinct that makes us obsess about everything that went wrong. We are configured in a way that tends to brush off the successes that are always there and only look at the negative results and experiences. This time can offset that negativity bias and help us to stay motivated.
3. workarounds — undoubtedly you will face various roadblocks and hiccups on such a big trip. That’s why it’s important to build some space in between those chunks so there is room for some flexibility. Always prepare your plan B, C or D when adversity hits. We are much more likely to succeed if we anticipate the things that might go wrong.
Building that self-awareness muscle is probably one of the hardest things to do in life but it’s also the most rewarding practice. It’s a continuous game of looking for answers inwards and verifying the discoveries outwards. The benefits are: having a sense of personal growth and a new perspective on life in general. Making choices becomes somewhat easier, but a the same time the choices themselves become harder so that, once again, you are challenged to go inward and look for new answers.