S3 E64: Why Trust is Essential to the Creative Process
We often hear people talk about trusting the creative process, but leaning into trust can benefit us in so many interconnected ways besides just when we’re in active creation mode. In this episode I explore all of the ways where trust can benefit our creativity, help you feel like a whole person, and offer tips to help you cultivate trust in yourself.
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RESOURCES MENTIONED
Build Your Seasonal Self Care Survival Kit workshop, summer edition (Th 6/16)
• S3 E13: Why We Resist Rest and How It Helps Our Creativity
• S3 E16: Why You Should Take More Breaks
• New Ruckus Composer Night (in St. Paul, MN)
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 64 of Being a Whole Person.
Today I'm going to talk about why trust is so essential to creativity, and not just for the “trusting the process” reasons that you might think. But first, I have a couple of announcements.
Number one: this is going to be the last episode before the podcast goes on summer break. I have a lot going on this summer, and I love to be able to walk my talk about taking breaks when you need them. So, over the summer, I'll likely be airing some old favorite episodes as reruns, because most of what I talked about here is still good when repeated. I need these reminders continually. Perhaps you do too. So that's what's happening with the show.
To stay in touch, you can still sign up for Creative Wellness Letters, my newsletter that comes out every other Monday, with similar messages to what you're getting here on the podcast, and Compassionate Creativity Club is still in session. We're going to be doing weekly coworking for coworking members every Tuesday, as usual. And in the Creator lab level, I'm going to be doing a monthly show and tell at the end of each month.
If you join up in the Creator lab, you also get access to my resource library, and my weekly creative dispatches about my composing Those are going to continue even if the podcast is taking a break. You also get access to my Discord community where we can chat about what's going on with your creative work, you get to share your process in a supportive place.
If you want to join at a lower level, there's also an option to join Curiosity and Care, which is just getting those weekly updates from me on my creative process, and the Discord community, as well as some weekly self care check in prompts via email. So all that stuff's gonna keep going on all summer long, even though I won't be releasing new episodes of the podcast.
Announcement number two, the summer edition of my Build Your Seasonal Self Care Survival Kit workshop is coming up on Thursday, June 16, at 4pm Pacific. That is actually the same price as the Creator Lab membership for a month, and if you join the Creator lab, you get free admission to the workshop. So what we do in that workshop is we create a master list of lots of different self care items that sound appealing to you. I give you lots of different ideas based on this framework of nine different types of rest, and then we distill that down into a menu that is your list of go to self care practices for this season.
You can repeat this process as many times as you like. It's why I do it seasonally, because our needs change from season to season, and it's great to get to keep checking in with yourself to see what it is you need right now. So I hope you choose to join the workshop. Sign up info will be in the show notes.
And lastly, my usual announcement to please rate and review the podcast. I know you've heard me and other podcasters say this a million times, but it really does help us get found. It helps in the world of algorithms, and it doesn't take very much time. Just go on over to your podcast app and write a couple sentences, give me some stars. It'll only take you like a minute. And it does go a long way. So thanks in advance if you do that, I really do appreciate it.
Let's get into talking about trust and just why it is so essential to creativity. There are so many different ways that you can cultivate trust in many different areas of your life. Since the title of this podcast is indeed Being A Whole Person, we know it is all integrated.
If you've been following along with me for a while, you might remember that my word of the year for 2020 was trust, and that's really funny now considering we know what the events of 2020 were, and how much unknown we all had to deal with. It did require a whole lot of trust. For me, the feeling of trust is really linked to peace and expansiveness, and just moving towards being the person that I want to be in the world, and having the energy resources to help other people.
Creativity, as you know, involves a lot of forging into the unknown, and that requires so much trust. It requires so much receptivity, to feelings, to messages from your body, creative downloads from the Muses, or whatever your philosophical take on creativity is. And if we are able to open up and really trust what is coming to us in that way, it really opens up so many things. You can be more open to opportunities, and the things that you want from your creative career and from your life.
I am, of course, not saying that you should trust anyone and everyone, this is more of the kind of trust that comes from your own intuition, your own inner voice, all that kind of stuff, which I will get into a little bit later in the episode.
So let's talk about the creative process. The first time that I showed my work, my composing work, to other composers, was at this composer gathering in St. Paul, Minnesota, called the New Ruckus. The guy who organized it said to me, “You obviously have a lot of trust in the process,”after he had heard my work. And it sort of took me aback because I thought, “Do I? Do I have trust in the process? I don't feel like I know what I'm doing.” But I think inherently we need to have some trust in the process to even get a note down on paper or whatever it is for you in your medium.
Have you ever been in a situation where you're just flowing with the creative process, and you're thinking, “What is this, I don't know what I'm doing right now. It's kind of weird, it's kind of out there, it might be out of my comfort zone, but I'm going with it.” That's trust! Every time that we dare to write something down, or commit to showing somebody else, that's trust.
There's always that point, though, in the middle of the process, where you're like, “This is terrible. I'm never gonna finish this. I'm gonna throw this away. I am terrible.” You know all these thoughts that come rushing in, I'm sure. And you might also be thinking how in the world am I going to do the next step in this process, because I don't even believe in this anymore.
I think that's all super normal. That happens to most of us in the middle of our creative processes, we run into that sloggy, messy middle, yucky thoughts stuff. But usually, if you find a way to keep going, whatever that is, your perception will change at some point, and you can turn a corner, or you can go, “I really don't like this piece, after all, I'm going to start something new,” and that's fine, too. That's definitely a time that we need to lean into trust - trusting that the next step will come to us. Or if we are starting something and feel a little out of it, like I don't have any good ideas. There's some trust in believing that the next idea will come to you.
Also, carving out the space and time for creativity requires trust, especially if productivity culture is making you have doubts about whether you can use your time wisely, and whether your efforts will convert into something worthwhile, whether that means to you that you produce good work that you like, whether you're seeking someone else's approval, whether you're seeking money, whatever that value is to you. It can be kind of a gamble, or it can feel like a gamble, because you don't know if you're gonna produce anything good that day. And you have to trust that it's part of the process, no matter what actually comes out.
If you are someone who is seeking to make money from your art, you have a business related to your creativity, there's a lot of trust related to that, as you know. Trusting that you'll be successful, whatever that means to you, whether you can make enough money to meet your expenses. And as you fellow self employed folks know, there's an element of creating in making the art, but there's also the element of creating your whole personal ecosystem, what it is that you do in your career.
We get to create that for ourselves, which is exciting, but it also takes some effort and some self awareness to know just what that should be, what your overall vision for your business is going to be and how it's going to evolve over time. Baked into that is trusting your own abilities and your own potential, your ability to figure things out. Each time we have to solve a new problem, like, “Oh, I need to get this thing on my website, but I need to solve this little tech thing, and I need to figure that out,” we are building trust in ourselves. You are affirming to yourself, “Yes, I can do this. Yes, I can figure this out,” every time you solve a problem, every time you make any kind of creation.
Every time you show up when you said you would, whether or not that requires outside accountability, you're still showing up, you're still doing the thing. You're building self trust when you surprise yourself with what you can create or what you can accomplish. Maybe that includes trusting in the power of habits to pave the way for positive changes in your life, or just to help you commit to creating on a regular basis. There's a lot wrapped up in this.
So that's all the trust related to doing. But then we also, on the flip side, need to trust rest, that rest is necessary, that we are allowed to step away from doing all the time. This whole idea of hustle culture that makes us think we have to be doing all the time, but we get to trust the fact that our energy is cyclical. Even if we feel really tired, we get to rest, and then we'll have more energy again. I know how hard it can be to trust rest, especially when you're convinced that being busy and doing all the things is what's going to make you successful. But they are both just as necessary.
I talk a little bit more about this in other episodes about rest, and I will link to those in the show notes if you want to check those out, instead of getting into it again here. I think it's so important to affirm that we will burn out if we never rest. Rest is so essential. Taking breaks is essential. Trusting that there is plenty of time. Taking a break feels like it might be taking you away from something important, and it might be a waste of time.
Compassionate productivity, which I talk about all the time, includes taking breaks. We need to be able to replenish our energy. If you've ever had an experience of pushing yourself really hard, and it took a long time to recover afterwards, you know what I'm talking about. It's just not sustainable.
I also know that when I've taken longer breaks, like legit breaks, where I don't open my laptop for a while, I turn into a flood of ideas, like a faucet that's just turned on, after those times. I'm not able to give myself that much time off, usually, but when it does happen, those extended breaks can really be magical when you come back. It can be in a smaller microcosm of break too, trusting that a deep breath or two will have a positive effect, or five deep breaths, which is why I start all of my workshops, and coworking sessions with five deep breaths. It really does help us get grounded and it takes like 30 seconds.
I also want to acknowledge that when we're accustomed to being busy, busy, busy, doing things all the time, and taking in tons of information via social media and the news and all the things, it can be uncomfortable to suddenly have quiet. It can be hard to trust in that quiet and stillness enough that you don't reach for your phone all the time, or you don't turn on a podcast or turn on the TV just to have noise. If you do those things, I'm not here to criticize you for that, but if you are feeling overloaded, maybe that's something to look at.
There can be a certain amount of trust in being alone with your own thoughts, sometimes, if you're a person who medicates with being busy. I'm definitely feeling some of that this weekend as my partner is out of town, and I'm on my own for about five days, which hasn't happened in a while. So it's like, “Oh, I can do whatever I want. It's very quiet and still in here,” which is something I crave as an introvert, but also something that feels uncomfortable when it hasn't happened in a while, because transitions can be uncomfortable or difficult.
Tied in with that is trusting yourself to meet your own needs, that you are able to be kind to yourself and supportive to yourself. If we can't be our own main supporters, as we go through the tough stuff in our lives, the creative process, career stuff, really anything is going to be so much harder. It might not be easy, even if you are supporting yourself, but at least you know you have your own back when you are practicing self compassion through the tough stuff.
Something that really helps us practice self compassion is trusting in your intuition, and your own inner voice, especially in the creative process. These things are deeply connected, the impulses that we choose, in what we're going to create next. We all have varying connections to our intuition, but I think a pretty universal thing is that if we get super busy, and we're doing too many things that fill up our brains, there isn't that much space to listen to what you're actually thinking and feeling. It can be really hard to connect to your intuition in those cases, and to put your brain, which might be on overdrive, in the backseat, and not let it drive the car.
It also might take some trust to lean into your emotions, or sit with them, or even acknowledge them, and asking for help and guidance and feeling secure in that. This is all a practice, of course.
Sometimes it can feel difficult to trust in pleasure or joy, feeling good for the sake of feeling good when we're so fixated on the productivity aspects of our lives, and these feelings of ease or alignment, lightness, expansiveness, whatever you choose to call it.
Where can you find tiny ways to lean into the fun things in your life, like, I just received a box of plums from one of my piano students, and I'll take a moment to just like, savor it, and probably eat it over the sink, because it's very juicy. But just to experience the sensory pleasure of eating this fresh, and very in-season plum, it doesn't have to be anything big.
Then in a more general sense, I kind of just think about trusting in the universe, or if you have a higher power that you call something different, whatever name you choose to ascribe to that, just kind of that trust that everything will work out okay. Fellow anxiety people, I know this is a process. I find it really comforting, though, to come back to this idea, just to tell myself, everything's gonna be okay, even if I don't believe it. Or even if it's not okay right now, to have at least a seed of that thought that maybe it will be okay in the future.
When you're feeling uncertain about what's next. I know it can be really hard to trust the process. I know this stuff is not easy. But think about what you can trust during those times, or what do you know to be true? What do you know about your past successes? What do you know about what you want from your life and your creativity, even if it's scary? Because you can try to practice trust and be afraid simultaneously, they can happen in tandem with each other.
Creating is a brave act. It is not for the faint of heart, as you know. So even daring to create is pretty amazing, no matter what the outcome is. Part of my process as a creative coach is helping you find that trust in yourself.
Coaches aren't here to give you the answers. It's easy, sometimes, for those of us who have things to share and teach to act like we have all the answers, and we'll just tell you them all right now. But of course, life really has more nuance than that. I always want to be helpful, but I never want to say that you absolutely must do what I suggest because I want you to trust your inner wisdom to know if something is right for you or not. My job is to just ask questions and help guide you toward knowing those answers for yourself, maybe pointing the viewfinder so that you know where to look.
Cultivating trust in any of these areas can require some deep work. It's all interconnected. It's going to affect every area of your life as you lean into this kind of openness to the process and being curious about what will happen, opening yourself up to the idea that something is possible, even if it doesn't intellectually particularly feel believable.
Leaning into trust can also mean leaning into the things that calm your nervous system and make you feel safe, because that is what will help allow you to access those feelings of ease and openness and feeling safe and enjoying and hoping for great things, whatever those things are for you.
The word trust usually feels like a warm, comforting hug to me and really calms my heart. So I hope that you have some of those feelings too. I hope that you're able to cultivate trust for yourself in your creative process, and in any area of your life, to nurture yourself as a whole person and a creator.
So that's all for now. I'll be back with new episodes in the fall. Or if I get inspired, maybe I'll put something out during the summer that's not a rerun, too. But keep up with me either on my email list, I'll be on Instagram a little bit. And you can always join us in Compassionate Creativity Club too. So I hope you have a great week, and a great summer, or winter if you happen to be in the Southern Hemisphere. I'm always rooting for you in all of your creative endeavors and in everything! See you next time.
Pianist and composer