On getting to know the (creative) self

AYTL: Week 10 of 52 - grab a notebook

“To know yourself, you must sacrifice the illusion that you already do.” — Vironika Tugaleva

In my voluntary digital pause last week, I took my time to revive old writing. It felt almost heroic to be offline for a few hours, diving into words and stories with nothing popping up to click or steal attention. Along the way, I realized a few things.

While I’m a stronger editor now, I can’t deny that some of my older work had a certain fearlessness. Perhaps this was because I figured no one would ever read it.

Sometimes, as artists, we gain and lose our most potent messages because we’re either coasting or holding back. A little success makes us arrogant, and a lot of failure tempts us to think we must conform. I think this happens in art/writing/life for the same reason. It happens because we’re taking for granted that our actions will automatically match our intentions.

One of the ways we can better align is to pinpoint our values as artists and people. I’ve thought about this a lot. Mine are honesty, ingenuity (creativity), and connection. I know this off-top because self-awareness is the foundation of all leadership coursework. It is impossible to grow and expand if we do not know who we are. But it can be easy to think we know ourselves and be a little off.

The harder question if we know our values is why are those our values?

We can think about personal experiences and how they shaped how we see the world. For me, ingenuity was a lifeline—a way of making magic from often-painful reality and trusting that to be different or unaccepted was okay. Honesty was what I saw as necessary to cultivate trust. Connection is something that I believe is fundamental to the human experience. Our decisions impact us all.

But even with these questions answered, how well do we know our (creative) selves?

The truly self-aware ask themselves this question often. It’s not one-and-done. We are always changing and adapting, as is our work. What we create, after all, reflects who we are.

My values are pretty static; perhaps yours are, too, but how well we know ourselves, if we break it down, comes back to that alignment—does what we value match what we create in the world? Or do we play to an audience?

If our values and actions do not align, that’s valuable information. It might be time to do a little reflection. I mean, sure, we can come up with endless reasons why incongruity occurs:

• Life is hard.

• We get emotional.

• We get confused.

• We get tired.

• The news is wild.

But maybe, too, we need to reconsider that what truly motivates us might not be what it once was. I think this week’s experiment can be an eye-opener.

AYTL Prompt: How can you live this week slightly more in line with what you truly value, and where you’d like to see yourself headed?

Writing Prompt: Write a story or poem about a character who’s out of alignment with their values, and let the antagonist be the barrier (or perceived barrier).

I will be doing this with you, and I’ll report back. I hope you find this exercise fruitful and a little less scary than this week’s.