Creativity and Self-Doubt
The battle with Resistance
Hey friend,
I hope you've been well!
Lately I’ve been thinking about how many creative people I know who have struggled with self-doubt. Some have learned to push through it and become a force to be reckoned with, while others have let it erode their self-image from inside and withered away the spark that once lit them up.
The loop starts something like this: you are working on something new, a song, a blog post, a painting, etc, and then you start to hit a creative roadblock. The ideas at first seemed to flow like water, but now it feels like you’re swimming up river. The ideas feel like they aren’t coming through, and you start to think that you aren’t good enough, you’re out of practice, so and so makes it seem so much easier when they do this. After a while you let this voice completely prevent you from being creative and you start to become resentful and envious of your peers who you see succeeding. You start to withdraw from your creative hobbies, pull back from social groups, and lose that magic that once lit you up. I’ve seen this swallow up several of my friends and peers, people I use to make music with, play shows with. I don’t hear from them anymore and they haven’t released music in years. They disappeared from the thing that once gave them life, ambition, and identity. They became a ghost, swallowed up by what feels like a demon.
The truth is, there is a part of you that wants you to fail. It hopes that you will just give up, throw in the towel and forget you ever tried to be creative in the first place. Why would anyone care what you have to say? This part, Steven Pressfield, in his book The War of Art, calls “Resistance”. He personifies this part of you as a force that is always working against you, trying to cause you to trip up, make a mistake, procrastinate, and give up. If you have a bit of experience as a creative person, you will know what he means as you have felt the sting of Resistance thousands of times. It feels like a little devil on your shoulder, constantly criticizing you and hoping you will listen.
Every time you reach for Netflix instead of your laptop, every time you say “i’ll do it tomorrow”, every time you think “what if I’m not good enough?
“, this is Resistance thwarting you again. I get hit with this force daily, like every other creative person, and sometimes it wins. Sometimes I am too tired, had a long day and I just don’t have it in me. Resistance won. Other days I hear that voice in my head and I ignore it and put in some work. I always feel better about myself after I have thwarted that demon for the day. The tricky part is that it will be well rested by tomorrow, and you will have to fight that fight again. It is a daily struggle, and you may not always win.
The thing that you need to understand is that you are not abnormal, broken, or unworthy because you have this voice of self-doubt in your mind. It comes with the territory of those who want to do great things. Steven Pressfield says that the greater your ambition, the greater you will feel Resistance. Think of it as the shadow to your ambition. If you have huge, lofty dreams, you will feel an equal but opposite force in the other direction, and this is Resistance.
The goal is not to defeat Resistance for good, and ride off into the sunset, creating your best work day in and day out. The goal is just to recognize this force as a real thing, and understand that you must contend with it daily. You do this when you hear the voice in your head tell you to just relax today, and instead you pull yourself up and get to work anyway. You will notice that you might get into a flow and start to crank out great ideas, surprising yourself even. An hour ago you thought you sucked and should just give up, and here you are with something you are proud of, and what makes it sweeter is that you did it even though Resistance tried to stop you.
This kind of victory builds momentum. Going to the gym when you don’t feel like it always feels sweeter afterwards. The same goes for working on a song even though I didn’t feel like it. All of a sudden I play a melody or accidentally click something I didn’t mean to and some magical happy accident comes along and changes the whole song. All it takes is a couple of victories in a row over Resistance and you start to build your creative confidence back.
If you have been gone for a long time, the first handful of sessions back will probably feel rusty and you might not get much done, but if you keep showing up, you will start to create your best work. The confidence you build when you are consistently creative is only attainable when you understand the necessary war against Resistance that you will have to fight daily.
If you want to read more about these ideas, I highly suggest you read The War of Art, it is a book I keep on my desk and flip through whenever I’m feeling self-doubt or starting a big new project. It is a book you should probably flip through at least once a year, if not more often. These ideas are something we tend to forget after a while and we find ourself slipping back into those familiar patterns, like deep ruts on a dirt road. Sometimes you have to be reminded of things that you already know, as we tend to absorb so much information daily that we end up having our psyche scrambled, and we lose our sense of direction. Having a philosophy like that of Resistance helps you recenter yourself, it acts like a compass in otherwise stormy weather.
If you want to check it out, you can find it below!
Take care my friend,
- Niko