5.16.24

Why does fear inhibit the creative impulse?

 

I want to think about the way that the things we are afraid of inhibit our desire and ability to engage in acts of creation.

 

One of the projects I’m working on right now is way outside of my usual comfort zone: It’s hyper technical, involved in a business sector I’m not familiar with, fairly novel, experimental, and could do much good for the world, but could also do much harm. I was trying to describe the anxieties I have about the project to one of my family members who asked me, “What are you afraid of?”

I am scared that ... technology ... is evolving so rapidly that I don't know how to build a business on top of it.

I am scared of potential risks.

I am scared that this will have ended up burning a bunch of money to test something that we are unprepared to really build and run; we will have wasted a bunch of money.

I'm scared of publicizing this mission and then failing at it.

I'm slightly scared of succeeding at it.

I think these fears are an interesting cross section of the kinds of things that regularly prevent people from trying to do things. It’s very scary to try something. What if you fail? What if they all laugh at you? What if it poisons future opportunities for you? What if it wastes a lot of money?

And because a bunch of these fears speak to the heart of identity and a person’s role in their community, in culture they are powerful demotivators to many. Indeed, I suspect that some of these fears are the primary reason that the vast majority of humans are consumers rather than creators: The fear of trying and failing is powerfully dissuasive.

I don’t really have antidotes to most of these (clearly) but I do find the following technique to be useful:

Sometimes when I feel overcome by an anxiety about some particular topic I try to engage in a Socratic dialog – in writing – in which I try to ask “Okay, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”

I find often this approach helps to neuter fears like these, because you realize that really… If you try to create something and fail, mostly, you’re no worse off than you are the day before you tried.

What are examples of public failures in the act of creation that ended up defining the lives or ending the careers of the creator who failed?