Confidence And Creativity. Let us take a sentence such as ‘I am…
By: Pretheesh Presannan
Tags: Creativity, Education, Creative Writing, Confidence, Creative Process

Photo by Shashank Sahay on Unsplash

Let us take a sentence such as ‘I am quite confident that I can do it’. Now, what does this mean, it means the person had done it before and is sure he could do it again. It is a simple explanation for confidence. If I let a glass cup fall down from my hands, I am quite confident that it breaks. Confidence is assurance. That is ‘I know what is going to happen’ and so I do it in that safety. There is another thing with confidence, that is confidence is always within the ‘known’. It could also be a brake pedal on further exploration. Confidence could be secondary and not primary. Now let us relate it with creativity.

When it comes to any creative process. Let us say, we want to write a poem or a short story or an engaging blog post or a new painting. Confidence is only so much that we know how to write or we know how to hold the brush etc. But the one that we are intending to create, write, or paint does not have anything to do with confidence. We can call it an inspiring idea or a theme, the primary gem upon which we can use our knowledge and experience to complete it.

That gem or that piece of creative spark. It could be in the form of an inspiring idea, it cannot happen within the zone of confidence. It has to happen despite how much experience one has or even if one has zero experience in whatever creative endeavor they are involved in.

Despite having so much experience and portfolio of previous creative works one has in his bag, if one has to create anything new again, he/she have to inevitably drop all that previous baggage and tap into the beginner’s mind.

And if we are just beginners without any experience, that we do not have years of consistent work produced, then it is natural for most of us to be overwhelmed by self-doubts, fears, lack of assurance, and confidence.

Confidence may not be of much help or should not be much of a concern here when relating to creativity. It could be helpful for a person to survive in society. But it is important to extract all these from the creative process. The problem with entering into a creative process is we cannot really know what might happen. Maybe we got a little idea to begin with, but then that is all to it, the other elements have to fall or happen in the process.

Let us try to relate the creative process with the Pareto Principle.

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

And within the creative process, we can say that 80% of the process may involve previous knowledge, technical know-how, acquired skills, etc. But that 20% lies in the zone of unknown. And that is where the inspiring ideas, creative sparks, etc happens from which we easily complete the other 80%.

And these creative sparks cannot be received by staying in the zone of knowledge, one needs to enter into the space of not-knowing, the uncomfortable zone. Being confident or arrogant does not help in entering this zone. One cannot fight the resistance to enter this zone either. One will have to stay at the edge of the unknown and be humble enough to enter into it without the baggage of pride or shame.

It requires from us a kind of listening filtered from mental-fear chattering for that spark to arise which helps us to create satisfying work. Not just any work done by rearranging the old words in various clever combinations or putting the old wine in the new bottle. But a new spark that keeps the spirits in you alive to do the rest of work.

It is a space of not-knowing-what-happens, and the more we fight to be free from this ‘not-knowing-space’ the more mediocre or lame our work becomes. Sometimes out of this fear of accommodating this ‘not-knowing-space’ we might completely stop entering the process with excuses for not having confidence or self-doubt or I am not good enough for this etc.

But what if we could consider the possibility that creativity does not depend on what one believes about themselves, what if it does not require you to be confident. What if it does not even depend on the personality of the one who is engaged in the process. Perhaps all it requires is the ability to welcome this ‘not-knowing-space’ that creates the possibility of the apple to fall on our lap, so to speak. Apple here referring to an ‘aha, this is good or this is what I want to work on’. Once we have that moment of ‘apple falls’ that automatically breaks through any blocks no matter who is doing it or his/her confidence and gets in the flow, the rest takes place on its own.

For writers, once they enter into this space and have that creative sparks, the aha moments, then their technical know-how’s and language skills will take care of the rest. But these are secondary and falls under ‘known’, the primary thing is to have these aha moments. The moments that bring or show us something new that was never there before. This space of ‘apple fall’ is not only limited to writing, painting, music, etc alone. It is also the space in which we grasp something clearly while learning and have that ‘ahh now-it-is-clear moment’. It is also a space of discovery if we are going to define it in the language of scientists.

For writers, perhaps the discomfort of having to face this space of ‘not-knowing’ is where they mostly call it writer’s block. It could actually be a resistance to enter into this space. And this block can only be broken with the next ‘apple-fall’ moment upon entering that uncomfortable space.

The difficulty is to have these ‘apple falls’. It should fall on our lap but it won’t fall on our lap if we are not willing to be with that ‘not-knowing-space’ in which any creativity or creative ideas sparks and which in turn triggers the further flow of creative juices within us.

Once that spark occurs then we naturally fall in flow with the process. But we tend to avoid this space of discovery. During childhood, we learned many things by entering into this space. Learning to walk with the right balance, learning a language, learning to talk almost like an accidental discovery. If we were to have the same beliefs we have about ourselves now, at that young age, we would never have learned to walk or even bothered to.

But then later for most of us at some point, we begin to fear to enter into this not-knowing. We feel scared to admit we do not know. We felt scared to be found out as someone who does not know things already. And this is how the school system functions. We are taught to learn quickly without having any clarity. We learn things like Pythagoras theorem, but we never bothered to grasp it exactly as what Pythagoras had it in mind, we just learned it for the sake of exams. And the school system never entertains gaps of ‘not-knowing’, we were forced to immediately fill the gaps as quickly as possible with what we previously learned and gave rewards for it.

Some people say I write or create when inspiration arises. But they could also be indirectly saying that they are uncomfortable with accommodating this ‘not-knowing-space’, they would rather hope for an accidental fall of the apple while scrolling on social media, etc, but it rarely does.

But if we want to be more prone to such accidents we need to create the possibility for that to occur. Whether one is confident or not, it does not matter as long as you are willing to show-up for the accidents or ‘apple falls’ to occur.

In that sense, a lack of confidence and limiting beliefs can even be challenged by entering into the creative process. We can see it again and again that limiting beliefs does not have anything to do with the output if we could hold that space.

Like an animal who patiently waits for its prey. It is an active participation process but still like the animal you do not ruin it with impatience. You only execute or jump on to the prey at the right time. The prey has to fall in the right range for the animal to execute the rest. Just like technical aspects like the writing style, grammar, etc can take care of the rest.

Not having confidence must not be seen as a bad thing or used as an excuse and one does not have to fight with lack of confidence, instead, enter into the creative process and see if the apple falls with or without confidence.

Our brain might cling on to the old which is known, it could be ‘I am not good, I won’t get this’, etc, but if we could resist the urge to escape in a patient way, then something might spark.

It is like meditation if you lack confidence in meditating, then that by itself could become the subject of meditation. In meditation, there is no excuse to get away, any doubt is a subject of meditation. And that is what creates the possibility of awakening intelligence within.

If you are an anxious or overthinking person then you might know that your mind is already creative in bringing up scenarios even surprise terrors which you could not have thought you would think. Yes, it is a case of our creative potential gone in the wrong direction that ends up creating suffering for us. But I believe that is also a creative flow. Maybe for such people slowly getting used to allowing that creative potential to flow in a useful direction might be great.

When you find yourself stuck or in doubt or fear of what if there is no way out, etc then perhaps that would be the perfect opportunity to exercise entering the not-knowing space. Opportunity to get used to entering the territory of the unknown. And who knows it might also be helpful in other areas of your life too where you had restricted to enter, as a side effect of getting involved with the creative process.

Hope this was helpful.

Thank You ❤