What is a creator?
I like how Josh Spector defines a creator. (See his list below.)
Notice that not one single item requires external validation. It seems to me—in my experience as both a creator and a coach of creators—that the thing holding us back is typically some version of approval-seeking. We want to make money from our creations (approval of customers), be acknowledged (approval of peers), gain or maintain status and opportunity (approval of gatekeepers), please our families, friends, and teachers (approval of personal networks), prove someone wrong (approval of naysayers), and so on.
Approval-seeking is normal, human, and understandable—being the social animals that we are, and needing to earn a living as most of us do. However, it’s a losing game. We can never really control what other people think, say, and do in response to our work. What’s more, approval-seeking gets in the way of trying new things and challenging the status quo. Our need for validation undermines the genuine expression that would make external approval satisfying in the first place.
Though we can’t banish this need completely, we can learn to detach from it when we pick up our pencil or palette. The way to do that is to become more curious about the approvals we seek—not to judge, but to observe how these fears and desires impact our work. We can also play around with ignoring those yens. How does that impact the work?
Over time and with practice, this cycle of observation and detachment is how we become bolder and more expressive.
This is how we give ourselves permission to be real.
How we become, as Spector says, “brave enough to try.”
How we finally begin to create.
1. A creator is someone who believes they can make someone else's life better. And is willing to invest their own time, effort, resources, and heart to do so.
2. A creator is someone who shares the lessons they've learned on their journey to make other people's journey easier.
3. A creator is someone obsessed with turning nothing into something.
4. A creator is someone who recognizes the best way to understand who you are and what you believe is to attempt to express it to others.
5. A creator is someone who believes there's a better way.
6. A creator is someone whose true religion is curiosity.
7. A creator is someone who would rather have no map to follow than be forced to follow step-by-step instructions.
8. A creator is someone who questions. Authority. The status quo. Conventional wisdom. The way it's "always" been done.
9 A creator is someone who defines success for themselves. And isn't bound to live by the expectations of others.
10. A creator is someone who understands the cost of doing something they don't believe in will always be more than the reward.
11. A creator is someone who’s brave enough to try.”