45. It Might Result In Nothing

Doing something you do not know how to do can be frightening. Your goal is to do it correctly and not make a mess of things. You want to be successful, but more importantly, you do not want to fail.

You are worried about your performance because any mistake might doom you to failure. Your actions become rigid and tightly controlled because you are evaluating your every move, judging whether or not it will help you achieve your goal.

To approach your task with no intentions, no focus, and no plan might seem foolish. It seems this way because your sole focus is the potential failure you see ahead of you. But it is when you let go of the desire to avoid failure that true creativity becomes possible.

Being creative means doing something you do not know how to do without any specific goal in mind. It means experimentation. It means trying out different possibilities without knowing how they will go. It means letting go of worries about performance, even though you do not know whether or not you will succeed.

Your effort might result in nothing. It might end up feeling like a waste of time. Accepting these possible outcomes is part of unleashing your creativity. If you only do things in the proper way then nothing that expresses your unique experience can emerge from you. You will be stuck following the same existing patterns and what you produce will be a reproduction what came before you.

To be creative, you must release yourself from all expectations, from all norms, from all goals. You must allow something wholly new to be born from your actions and you cannot do this when you are trying to meticulously control the outcome.

Your creativity is also a kind of freedom. It cannot function properly when it is hindered by your unwieldy desire to avoid failure. You must set it loose and allow it to play. Only then can you possibly hope to create something vivid, expressive, and beautiful.