Is there a bad time to start a new project?

I have never believed in the elusive perfect time to start something new. If I did, I would still be waiting for it. And with age, which amplifies the sense of finitude of life, it is no longer an option. However, being a little bit about two months (out of 6 years!!!) into my PhD, the need to slow down and take a deep breath inspired some reflections that made me wonder whether there is such a thing as a bad time to start a new project. There is no need for panic, I will not drop out, but as we often share the fun and wonderful things, it is also important to acknowledge what chaos and mess are often lying underneath them.

About a week after I accepted the offer, the University of Essex announced its plan for closing the Southend campus, redundancies and other money-saving exercises with high impact on students and staff. Mind you, this was just a year after UoE was deemed to be financially safe. Since January, when I started, there have already been two strikes, and it sounds like a third one is on the way unless the dispute is resolved soon. I’m naturally on the side of solidarity, but it can hardly be called a good, calm first term to settle into the new routines. Along with the cuts at university, this year seems to be a major year for changes in funding, at least in the areas I am inhabiting, and while some options are paused, some disappeared completely and those that are still going see unprecedented amounts of applications. No surprise there.  An optimist as I am, I may say that this is just the first year of many to come that will see the flow of resources significantly redirected from education and research to investment bubbles and war economy. Not that it started this year, but it's just that the cracks are beginning to show more and more.

On the personal front, I have to admit, I have been successfully mirroring the dire societal situation with a major drop in income that sent me into a place of discomfort where I’m holding the tension as stoically as I can, wondering every day if it is finally the time to knock on the doors of our local jobcentre. I’d say I’m fairly good at navigating uncertainty, but it also requires a very hard look in the mirror once in a while and a great deal of realism to be able to recognise when the sense of “navigating through” turns into delusion. As a result, I’m constantly on the go, looking for new streams of income and opportunities, knowing that burning out wouldn’t do anyone any good, questioning whether there is such a thing as a work-life balance and if so, where is the hyphen really? In the midst of the worries, my kids are living their best lives, doing exams, being creative, making plans for the future, having a thriving social life and that, as jolly as it is, also requires a lot of attention and care from a solo parent—all that with overwhelming reading lists and a capital creative block under my belt.

What is rather counterintuitive to what I just wrote is the feeling that my baseline isn’t anywhere near exhaustion, burnout or depression, but stays pretty much all the time in the realm of “happy”. There were certainly times when life was much less chaotic, the world situation was considerably more stable, and I had to fight for every drop of “happy” on a daily basis. Resilience is a peculiar concept.

So, did I really pick a particularly bad time to shut myself home with books and articles when life is so loud and calls for attention on every single front? Or is it still the best time, as worse is about to come? My thoughts go out to all students, artists, musicians, actors, philosophers, linguists, anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and other researchers who are sticking with their craft in much worse conditions than we are experiencing here right now. Maybe the perfect time isn’t to be found in anticipation but reveals itself first in retrospect.  

Maybe it is just one language...

Once someone asked me how my Danish was coming along, and I remember saying that I wouldn’t want to have a discussion on Plato’s philosophy, but I could get by very well in daily life. Based on that answer, I realised that I still had some idea about linear progress in language learning that leads from simple to complex and nuanced. And it is fair enough when you look at the textbooks and internationally agreed levels (A1, A2, B1, B2, etc.), they all suggest there is a progressive path of that kind. However, after 17 years of living in countries I wasn’t born in, something strange happened. I really wouldn’t want to discuss Plato in the language I’m supposed to know best – in Czech.

What I didn’t know back then was that languages are always situated, always domain-specific, and you can’t assume that if someone can write an excellent article on highly specific research in chemistry, that they would also be comfortable having a small talk in that language. And that, of course, goes the other way as well. I first noticed this discrepancy in my jewellery making. All the words, all the names of the tools or procedures I knew were in Danish; if I wanted to communicate with someone in the Czech Republic using the same tools and techniques, I had to search for images and find the words. In metalsmithing, Danish was my first language. And as I went along, it had only become more evident in various aspects of my life. I have no issues sustaining a discussion about Jung’s and Simondon’s philosophy in English, but I would be terrified if I had to do the same thing in Czech. On the other hand, when reading poetry, it is a whole different, much richer experience in Czech than in English. I have recently learned that I can read an academic article in German fairly easily, but I can’t have a conversation with a stranger on the street. I thought that after 10 years in an English-speaking country, I would have a reasonable grip on the everyday talk, but I’m still learning, searching up phrases and words, and even though they are usually in the colloquial and regional departments of the language, there doesn’t seem to be an end to it.

In the meantime, my Czech is stuck in 2008, and while I’m able to write a Facebook comment or text with friends my age, just listening to some podcasts or TV makes me wonder how much the language has changed. I haven’t read a book in Czech for ages, and when I have to draft an email to someone I don’t know, I struggle to find the right words and phrases that would express the correct level of politeness and neutrality. A person I know was recently giving a presentation of her research in her native language after she spent most of her adult life in a different cultural and linguistic context. She noticed that not only was it difficult to learn the proper vocabulary and feel confident when speaking, but that the content of her research also didn’t translate 1-1 into the other cultural environment. More work needed! This is something I see quite often in the other direction. The nuance of context when translated into English from its original milieu just loses something very subtle, but also very real.

Sometimes, most of the time, it feels like I can’t use any language properly as I’m always hanging somewhere in between them. So, what I thought of is that we don’t really acquire multiple languages, we move between codes that are context-specific, maybe we have some sort of “individual” language that operates in different areas differently, we just learn more words, more structures and rearrange as we go. Does it sound too strange?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

Tend to your blisters and go for a walk

A couple of weeks ago, I got a new pair of DMs to replace their predecessors suffering from a considerable case of “wear and tear-ititis”. Those initiated know that such a change doesn’t come painlessly. Once the first generation of blisters caused by the mixture of enthusiasm and amnesia heals, you employ protective measures to prevent the second generation from forming. However, no procedure is flawless, and it is likely to fail at some stage. I am at the moment observing a second-generation development on my right foot, which posed a significant dilemma this morning. To skip the morning walk on the coastal path or patch it up and go.

As you might have guessed, I opted for the latter and limped my way to the marina while ordering a new box of Compeeds on my phone. The coastal path is a special type of ecosystem. You can’t see it until you become a part of it. That lady in a bright blue jacket that I can recognise from a far distance by the character of her walk. The dog with a perfect face for a Disney villain in Lady and the Tramp. The runner who always wears shorts. The family that joins every morning to walk their dogs together. The crows that crack shells by throwing them from high on the beach stones. The depressed heron that always sits in the same spot in the morning, crouching, staring at the horizon. The “good mornings” and “hellos” become an understated acknowledgement of the integrity of the ecosystem.

When anything disturbs the balance, it is immediately felt. Not just noticed, felt. Like the new fence that was put up last week, which made many wonder. The contractors do not know, the council doesn’t know, but the path knows and feels it. It will take a few rainy weeks until the fence weathers, the grass grows around its base, and the eye softens. Then it integrates into the ecosystem. Now irreversibly changed.

While walking, I have been thinking a lot about para-academic spaces and the underground networks of connections that keep us sane in the world where overground sanity imploded with profound intensity. I also thought of the Scandinavian folk high schools model, housing seminars in communist Czechoslovakia, interest groups formed around art practice, books or specific subjects, and places. When we are creating those spaces, aren’t we just building monocultures instead of ecosystems? How would they be even able to survive if they didn’t specialise, market themselves, and put up barriers at the point of entry to ensure safety for their members? Is there a model like the coastal path? No leaders, no barriers. Can we do academia without professors? Jungian studies without Jung? Spiritual practices without gurus? Art practice that grows from the land rather than from the great masters. Philosophy understandable for anyone taking up the challenge to think? Can we include animals, plants, the asphalt of the road, the rainbow and even the ugly new fence? The thoughts come and go; their movement can’t be predicted, and they resist being captured.

I don’t have answers, but I learned that the key to the ecosystems is showing up. Taking care of your own blisters, but getting out there every day to say, “good morning”. I think that one day, even the new DMs will break in.

Thirty days of bad writing

It is no secret, as I have mentioned many times before, that since writing my dissertation, I have developed a first-class writing block. I have never experienced anything of this magnitude before; if anything, writing was always one of those things that came easily, even in times when I wasn’t inspired to make jewellery or paint. Now it is all stuck in the pipes somewhere, and I feel like I’ve tried everything I know to restore the flow, but with very questionable results.

Yesterday, I tried to write a post about women in philosophy (something I have been noticing intensely, an observation that all my contacts and connections in that world are constituted by men), and after spending an unreasonable amount of time on it, I had to conclude that the text was objectively bad. I did not delete it, but I didn’t publish it either. I’m sure you understand the sense of frustration which comes with time wasted on hitting a wall.

I am, obviously, able to produce words if I must (and sometimes I do), but it feels like I’m birthing each sentence with a disproportionate sense of suffering. Something that should be done with lightness and, I believe, should be fun to do, turns into a chore that I keep putting off till the last minute, and when the last minute arrives, my brain melts, my fingers become heavy, and I collapse into minimalist sentences and words that kill ideas rather than feed them and make them stronger.

On self-reflection, I realised that there may be three parts of the problem. One is the lack of inspiration that is not just about not having ideas, but about not seeing how a simple idea could be developed further. The other refers to the craft of writing. As with any craft, when you take a break and come back to it, you are rusty. Everything takes longer, you feel insecure about the smallest things, and you simply lose the perspective that can accommodate the surplus without drowning in it. The third issue is the audience. Knowing that I lack inspiration and my craft is rusty, and someone is going to read it, is the best recipe for paralysis. Once I got over the pain of frustration and identified these three areas of potential problems, I decided to attack them all at once and see what (if anything) comes out of it. Hence, I set up a challenge to write badly and publicly to practice the craft, explore what on earth is happening in the space of inspiration and do it openly. The reason I decided to share this experiment is quite simple. We are our worst critics and if I let everything I wrote sit in an enclosed area in a notebook or a Word document, I would find it more difficult to ever let it go, which would spiral just deeper and reinforce the block.

Whether I will stick with it for 30 days is an open question, and I’m not by any means committed to it (a great way to start a challenge, hey?), I simply liked how it sounded. My hope is to write as much and as often to become comfortable in that space again.

Consider yourselves warned. There is no need to read from the place of solidarity, but if you do, I’m forever grateful for the support. Let’s see if a creativity coach can help herself.

The "cringe element" of authentic work

Do you ever feel slight embarrassment when looking back at your old work? Especially the one you thought back then was pretty good? I know I do. And I know I’m not alone. A few things happened lately that made me think (and Google) what is it that hides behind the cringe when you re-read your old blog posts, academic essays or look back at your art.

This is the first ever ring I made. I had no clue what I was doing, I had only a book borrowed from a local library with descriptions and words I never knew before and some very basic tools. I’m actually quite proud knowing that people in my workshops don’t need to struggle half as much as I did.
No cringe here, this is a battle scar I wear proudly today!

Situation no 1: It was Saturday morning, and I was looking for two rings I wanted to bring into the workshop as examples of work that could be done. As I’m terribly disorganised when it comes to past and not-worn jewellery, I had to go through several boxes and drawers to find the right ones. During that search, many pieces resurfaced. Most of them I made and put into a dark place to rest, as I couldn’t get over the immediate cringe I felt when they were finished. Spoiler, with time put between us, they are not bad at all. I think I might repolish and wear some of them, maybe even put them up for sale.

Situation no 2: I read guidance for funding application, where they encouraged us to think of ALL academic successes that might be relevant to the research. I remembered that after finishing my Psychology degree, I was asked to share the abstract of my research project as it would be added to the university’s repository of examples for future students. I was flattered at that point and gladly agreed. I never checked if they actually published it or not. Until yesterday. I don’t think that the expression “mixed emotions” covers it. Reading that abstract, knowing there have been hundreds of people looking at it, having my name on it, felt a bit… ehm… awkward. Of course, I would have done a better job if I were writing it today, but on the other hand, it stands fairly well next to other students’ work. It feels such a long time ago, as if a different person wrote it, and still I can recognise my own voice in it, and that voice was nowhere near as confident as I wished it were.

So what is it about the work we produce? Where is the embarrassment coming from? Does it change with time into compassion? Are there people who are consistently proud or at least at peace with everything they have ever made?

I think it often happens in the arts that people feel their artworks reveal more about them than they planned to share. There is a moment in which the maker’s soul touches the finished work and makes it human, relatable. But also imperfect in the sense that every person has their shadow side that gives them depth and complexity. Something we are keen to hide or even reject. It seems to me that every genuine engagement with work needs to cross the divide between the maker and the made, and as such, they both bleed into each other and leave traces. Often unconscious, but they are there, and when we look back at our work, we recognise them. And we feel it. And it might not always be pleasant.

There is only one way to avoid discomfort. By never creating anything, and if so, then making it as impersonal, generic, glossed over and polished through layers of masks that it wouldn’t touch anything in our souls (sounds like AI, doesn’t it?). But then the question is, why bother doing this at all?

And I wonder if there is a therapeutic or a coaching element in approaching the work, recognising the uncomfortable feelings and exploring them intentionally. What is it that makes me cringe? Why is that? Once I work through it, will compassion and acceptance replace discomfort?

What do you think?

It is not your marketing skills - it is social media fatigue

Reading time 2.5 mins

It started as a good idea. At first, I limited my YouTube to music only (I don’t use Spotify, it’s a robbery in daylight), then I deleted Facebook from my phone… Within a few weeks, I began thinking about buying a regular watch, so I could leave my phone at home without worrying about the time. The strange thing was, I didn’t feel any FOMO or impulse to “just check” what’s new. It wasn’t a digital detox as you read about it in the self-help section; it wasn’t even a productivity hack; it was a pure relief. And I didn’t want to go back. The problem was that my work and, hence, my earnings are very closely tied to the online presence. However lovely Bangor is, most people find my workshops online, and most people I connect with are not geographically local. And then something clicked for me.

I wish I could get a pound for every time I hear an artist, a psychologist, a coach, a healer…, saying that they need to learn more about marketing and selling to make their business sustainable. I think there is a widespread idea that there is some esoteric knowledge behind marketing strategies we all need to access and learn, but really, especially on a small business level, it is just about talking about your work and what you have to offer. And anyone can do that. (and yes, some basic rules are good to be aware of, not to dismiss the whole industry). So what if the problem of sustainable marketing is not in the strategy or education, but in social media fatigue?

I guess this is the best representation of “being offline” I could think of. summer in the Alps.

I hold two certificates in digital marketing from a local college (several months that I will never get back), so in theory, I’m fairly well equipped to take care of my own small business, and perhaps even advise others. Why don’t I use it? The answer is in the first paragraph of this text. The constant pressure to be seen, available, sociable, interesting, aesthetic and gods know what - I call it “the performative element”. It can be overwhelming. It takes away from the deep, focused work that I love and enjoy so much. I did not choose to be a jeweller or a coach because I loved posting content online; I chose it for the transformation that happens if you are attentive, tuned in, when you connect to the people on a much deeper level than likes on Instagram (thank you for everyone liking and commenting!). And I suspect most people in the creative sector, or helping professionals, feel very similarly about their work.

So, let’s just speculate a little. What if, just a tiny little if, you don’t need to get better at marketing, you don’t need to attend the next available workshop, subscribe to yet another marketing expert’s email list, or explore another marketing strategy, but what you really need is to address social media fatigue? Avoidance is rarely about not knowing what to do; it is much more about other underlying issues that set barriers to effective action. They are often not consciously known, but they show up through emotions, words, and behaviours. I think it is an interesting topic to explore either through introspection or in coaching (shameless plug here). Is it reasonable to suspect that the sentence “I’m just not good at the marketing stuff” actually means “I really don’t like being on the apps so much”? And if it is, how can we make it work without burning out?
What do you think? Have you found any balance? Did you go off and on again? How was it? And why on earth is it so hard to stay consistently online?

I would love to hear your thoughts and observations.

P.S.: I still feel almost physically sick just looking at the meta business suite interface, but I'm getting there!

Artists and mental health

When we talk about art and mental health, what we usually have in mind is the positive impact on someone’s well-being when they engage in creative activity. What is, though, lurking in the distant corners away from the usual discussions in psychology is the mental health of those who made art their career.

Last week I went to a really interesting event organised by the Arts Council NI on Mental health and wellbeing in the creative sector, and that amplified some thoughts I’ve been mulling over for quite some time. It is not that I was unaware of the challenges of the creative sector, after all, that is very much my daily reality. The question is, what can we do if we can’t change the whole underlying structure?

In 2018, a comprehensive survey of mental health in the creative sector in Ireland (you can read the whole thing here) found that artists were three times more likely to be diagnosed with mental health issues than the general population. The most common diagnoses were anxiety and depression, but it also showed high levels of suicidal ideation and substance use. The most obvious stressors in the creative sector were the pressure to perform (also the one we put on ourselves) and insecure employment, along with low financial reward. If you work in the creative sector, you know. :-)

In the ideal world, I imagine, regular income and a little bit more space to take a deep breath and play would probably solve quite a great deal of the anxiety issues. But if we can’t do that, what is the second-best thing? At the event in Belfast, I learned about some interesting projects that I want to leave here in case someone needs them (I’m definitely signing up for a few things myself).

Minding Creative Minds is an organisation providing help to people working in the creative sector in the whole of Ireland. You can access mentoring, counselling, therapy, workshops and all sorts of programs, all free of charge. It is very accessible and not very well known in Northern Ireland.

Recovery College provides a whole range of mental health services (not specifically to people in the creative sector), both online and offline, in Northern Ireland. It is absolutely worth having a look!

Arts Council NI is starting its own series of workshops to support the well-being of artists. It is a good idea to sign up for their newsletter to get the info

And of course, what I can do, is to offer space in my coaching. As you probably know, coaching is not therapy or counselling, it does something else, it is a space to explore and think, find new perspectives and get the support and accountability you need. Unlike therapy or counselling, coaching is increadibly flexible and it is up to you, how often you want to meet or how you want to use your time (within the ethical framework, of course :) Staying in touch with a coach, even if it is just a once a month, is a good way how to take care of yourself and catch any issues before they grow into overwhelming problems.

I will never market my workshops for mental health - here is why

Not long ago, I had a conversation about art and craft classes promoted to improve well-being and mental health. As a jeweller and a psychologist researching creativity, I suppose I could easily make that step and even sound rather credible, but there is a very clear reason why I run my jewellery-making classes as “craft only”, and I leave my “psychology” hat at home.

Besides the fact that I love the craft regardless of my academic background, there is another, much more serious issue that I see throughout society spreading into the creative industry and undermining its purpose. We are so used to making choices and doing things for their secondary interest that it often falls under the threshold of perception. As young people, we are told to choose our area of study BECAUSE it will deliver a desired position on a labour market, we exercise BECAUSE we want to stay fit, we make certain meal choices BECAUSE it keeps us healthy and prolongs our life expectancy, we spend time in nature BECAUSE it is good for our mental health, and yes, you guessed it, we do art BECAUSE it is proven to be beneficial for our mental health and well-being.

We are living in a constant chain of Mephistophelian deals with high-flying promises and uncertain outcomes. When the desired effect is not achieved, we get ill, struggle to find a well-paid job position or experience difficulties with mental health, we are made to believe that we didn’t do enough and put another item on our already long list of “chores” that should make us into good citizens, consumers and human resources. It is a perpetual entrappement in a utilitarian universe with no relief from the constant pressure on performance. Which, quite honestly, isn’t great for mental health either.

What I propose instead is studying subjects because they spark curiosity, exercise for the joy of movement, eat healthy for the pleasure of good food, spend time outdoors to experience exposure to elements and do art for creative expression. Make jewellery for the sake of making jewellery. And forget everything else. Perhaps the feeling of well-being will follow. Or maybe you will experience a great deal of frustration or any other type of affect that people perceive when faced with creative challenges. The variety is important here. Being human, living with a psyche and within culture and social relationships is incredibly complex and trying to reduce it to one-directional growth sounds like a very poor arrangement to me.

So, if you ever make it through the door to my jewellery-making classes, you will learn how to make a piece of jewellery. That’s the deal.

If you want to work on your wellbeing, catch me on the days when I work as a coach :-)

Disclaimer: What is written below does not apply to workshops that are designed for a specific group of clients, especially those already struggling with mental health issues, or people living under challenging life circumstances, such as those in provisional housing (asylum seekers included) or otherwise institutionalised. Those workshops need to consider a whole different set of nuances and complexities that cannot be easily summarised.

Why Jung?

Jungian psychology, especially in the English-speaking world, is far from being a first choice for most psychologists or clients. We are all much more likely to run into CBT-trained therapists, counsellors and coaches, or those who draw on the humanistic tradition. If you are quite niche, you will find a psychoanalyst. So, what does Jungian psychology have that makes it an interesting alternative?

Finding balance

Neumann, Jung and Eliade

Famously, Jung once said that he would rather be whole than good. What he was referring to was his idea of complementary aspects of one’s mind that cannot be isolated and dealt with separately from everything else. If you reject or neglect some part of the psyche, it will create an imbalance that will sooner or later undermine your good work with new issues that will require your attention. The idea of personal growth or self-improvement doesn’t lead through overemphasising the positives or turning your weaknesses into strengths, but in a much more intricate manner, accommodating them both and exploring if something new can come out of it.

Social awareness

I know many Jungians would disagree with me, but this is the hill I’m willing to die on [smile]. Jung comes from the “collective era” of our society, and for him, it was important to emphasise the value of functioning well amongst people, which is a tricky path between overidentification with societal roles and withdrawal from them. In the past 60 years, we have been isolating individuals and fragmenting society to the point that people in coaching or therapy are encouraged to set themselves apart from their environment and work on their issues somehow independently. As a social psychologist, I’m struggling with this view, and Jung offers an interesting alternative, which is much more holistic in its approach.

Considering the unconscious

Most modalities, and especially in coaching, are primarily focused on behavioural change. That is often achieved by reasoning, understanding emotions, making plans or goals, or dealing with perceptions, beliefs and memories. While all those aspects are absolutely valid, there are parts of our psyche that cannot be understood by cognitive functions alone. Leaving those unacknowledged, we are neglecting an enormous potential for self-discovery and development. Having a dream, a hunch, or an inspiration is quite as valid as information one learns from filling out a psychometric test.

An open door to creative expression

I love using journals, drawings, paintings (jewellery, of course) and any methods of expression as long as they help you to process and understand some parts of yourself that can’t simply be verbalised in the traditional talking-coaching setting. As you may know, I’m also a creativity coach and a jewellery maker, and I see immense value in working with materials in the external world that open up a different space for “thinking”.

Coaching relationship

Even in therapy, Jung resisted the idea that a psychologist is somehow above human struggles and should show the path to his patients. A hundred years later, we hopefully finally understand it fully, also outside of Jungian psychology. However, where Jungian psychology is still unique is the concept of the “wounded healer”, the imperfect human being, who meets another human being and creates a safe container that, through this relationship, has the potential to generate new insights and experiences. The demand on the therapist or a coach is to be willing to be transformed along with the client. It is, of course, not meant to take the client’s space, but rather open a space where we are all willing to go together. Some coaching modalities prefer the coach to be a blank slate, a sounding board or a mirror (all inanimate objects). I personally prefer to show up as a complex human being.

Like any topic, I find it difficult to summarise and put into simple points, but if any of this resonates with you and you would like to try some coaching with me, please check my calendar or get in touch for availability and other details.

Are we all creative?

I’ve just listened to a podcast of a Danish psychologist, where she claimed that creativity is one of the most underrated areas in psychology when it comes to people’s quality of life. And I couldn’t agree more. We know that creative activities can be beneficial for mental health, dealing with stress or working through difficult feelings. However, we don’t talk enough about the preventive powers of creativity and why it is necessary for a human being to stay creative at least as much as to be physically active. 

For whatever reason, our society decided to treat creativity as either some luxurious spare time folly or an exclusive item limited to highly talented people who in their creative endeavours contribute to the development of the whole society. If you aren’t one of those creative geniuses and if by any chance you have limited spare time, you are very likely to push creative activities either lower on your priority list or completely out of your life. 

Sir Ken Robinson in his Ted Talk (and books) argued, that schools kill creativity and that we are being educated out of it. Just think about it, how natural it is for a small child to pick up a pencil and draw, to build, sculpt, make sounds and all of this. We would be worried about their development if they didn’t. Yet, we are not worried at all about adults who don’t draw, paint, sing or make. We just say “Nah, he/she is not creative” and move on. 

Why on Earth would small children naturally engage in such activities, why would we have art throughout the history of humankind, if it was not essential? And yet we think that we can simply opt-out from being creative and at the same time maintain our overall health. 

Now, I’m not talking about everyone picking up oil paints and starting to paint elaborate landscapes. I’m talking about “everyday creativity”. Or better creative activities. It can be as simple as knitting a hat, doodling for a while or playing a musical instrument. It can include making things for your own home or just writing down your thoughts and playing with words a little. You can do it as a part of your job, your time spent in your home or with other people, it doesn’t matter what form and shape such activity takes. The most deciding factor is the enjoyment of the process, the fact that you are bringing to existence new forms and ideas and that it is not all happening just inside your head but you use your body to make it happen.

There are many reasons and possible explanations why this has a positive impact on our lives, but for the sake of this blog, let’s just leave it here. The drive to create something, to engage with the world and to use our body and mind for expression is something deeply ingrained in our humanness. We can’t simply dismiss it, we can only suppress it. And when we do, it shows at some point, somewhere. Similar to physical activity which has a direct impact on overall health, creative activities impact our psyche. And we really should care for our minds as much as we care for our bodies. 

.... you make your own path as you walk

About two weeks ago, I was trying to describe to my coach (yes, I do have a creativity coach) how I happened to be in a (metaphorical) place where I felt a bit lost. It was as if all the clarity of previous weeks and months was obscured by a very thick fog and I could see just about a meter in front of me, but nothing else. I was trying to describe to her, that it wasn't just fog, it seemed as if the path wasn't there at all. I voiced my concern, that I might be just walking in circles instead of keeping my direction to where I’d like to go. (And yes, I love a good metaphor, lol).

When she was listening to me, she remembered a poem. It is called Caminante no hay camino and was written by Antonio Machado. The point of the poem is, there is no path to follow. The path is made by walking and you can see it only when you look back, knowing you will never walk there again.

People who create art, new businesses or are trying to live on their own terms, don’t have a path to follow. We all have to figure it out, there is wilderness and us. The motorways and pavements and "walks in the parks" where most people gather, do not interest us. They are miles away where we can hardly see or hear them.

It is not the most convenient choice, but it is the only one that feels true. One step at a time, walking forward in unknown territory. The side effect of this situation is, that we can often feel lost. And everything only starts making sense when we look back.

From this perspective, feeling lost is a good thing. It is a sign that we are genuinely present on our own path and not following anyone else’s prescriptions and shoulds (nothing wrong with that, if that’s what you want, of course).

I’m still struck by the wisdom and beauty of this imagery. It is something I want to keep on top of my mind every time I feel insecure and disoriented.

At the end of the day, the fog will always clear up and the milestones will become visible. Until then, it is just one step at a time…

The poem is:

Antonio Machado

“Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.”

Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;

only a ship's wake on the sea.

A glimpse of wilderness in the Irish overcultivated landscape… That’s where I want to be!

Where is the home for creativity?

I suppose that once we start wondering what creativity is, we are forced to start thinking about where it is? As I said before, not only that psychology doesn’t really know how to define creativity as a phenomenon, there is also no consensus about where to look for it. If it sounds weird, let me explain.

If we followed the line of psychological research, the first assumption on creativity was that it is something extraordinary artists possess. They are born with it, they use it, it is part of their persona, some sort of “happy accident” of mother nature that gave a gift to some and left out the most. Well, thanks to this perspective, quite a lot of studies were done to understand what separates these creative geniuses from everyone else. From this research psychology later moved on to examining personality traits, looking for something that would indicate “creativity” in a similar sense we understand intelligence. Despite numerous testing mechanisms that have been developed since the early 20th century, neither of them truly measures what we call creativity. They do measure something, often that something is in one way or another related to creative thinking or expression, but it's not quite there yet.

The question of whether creativity is indeed found in individuals as separate entities has been raised in the 60s. When it became obvious that creativity is heavily dependent on the social context in which it unfolds. So instead of creative persons, psychologists started to measure creative products. (not going into details, but basically, a committee decided whether some outcomes are or aren’t creative based on their education and experience within a certain culture).

Well, that didn’t really seem to solve the dilemma either. People like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi began to pay more attention to what is actually happening between the individual and the social environment and started studying creative manifestation as a process.

The trouble is, not all process is inspired by creative ideas or results in a creative product, so where is creativity? Is it the environment, the person, the process or the product? Or maybe all of them?

There are areas of psychology that consider the idea that the mind is not limited to the human body. It is much more than that. There have been several concepts and attempts to describe this, and I think when it comes to creativity we are actually up to something here. It doesn’t fully exist in any particular element but as a dynamic interaction between them. We can call it a collective mind, psychodynamic process or use a metaphor of a muse or daimon that is not quite in one's head but inhabits a space in between the worlds and brings inspiration and courage to execute the idea from the unknown dimensions into the material reality.

What a beautiful, beautiful thought!

I took this photo on my way home… It just made me very happy with all the orange and green in the middle of a busy road. A little bit in-between worlds.

What is creativity? - What psychology didn't get quite right (yet)

Reading time: 3 min 11 sec

The blessings and curses of psychology are, that everyone is a potential subject of a study and at the same time everyone can comment and openly disagree with whatever knowledge psychologists come up with. Just imagine how fun would science be if let’s say a biologist described what a nucleus is and how it behaves and the nucleus decided to disagree with him. Or if a botanist studying a population of orchids was reminded that she is missing the nuances in the unique expression of each plant? I mean, I’d love to live in a world like that, but that’s probably why I chose psychology in the first place. 

Why am I saying this? The trouble with any psychological phenomenon is, that it is not quite as easy to isolate, define, describe and examine as it is with let’s say a rock specimen. And creativity is in this sense particularly tricky. Possibly, that is one of the reasons why it has always been somewhere on the periphery of psychological interests. 

It hasn’t been until the 1960s that creativity research truly took off. I blame the zeitgeist and the power of flowers on this one. However, it became rather obvious, that we don’t exactly know what creativity is and every attempt to measure or study it in some way just touched on one of its aspects. Paradoxically, when psychology was scratching its imaginary head, everyone else seemed to know what creativity was. Common sense recognizes it, the science is never quite sure. After several decades of changing definitions, psychology finally agreed on one. Are you excited to hear it? Well… Creativity is the ability to create something new and efficient. 

That falls flat right on the belly of disappointment, right? The main argument behind the definition is, that creativity can be understood by its final product (whether material or not) and that such product needs to be not only original but also in some way useful. I could find about two hundred reasons to go on a long rant about why this definition is lazy and why we need a new one. But I will spare you for now. Instead, I will share what thoughts were going through my head when I was writing my psych. undergrad dissertation. 

Creativity is not just what you think, it is what you do. And vice versa. A creative idea in our society is called inspiration. And inspiration is maybe an element of creativity, but not creativity itself. Inspiration needs to be followed through and fulfilled in the cleanest form possible to become creativity. At the same time, just an action, let’s say building a house, or painting a portrait does not necessarily need to be creative. Similarly to intelligence, you can work on mathematical problems following pre-defined formulas without particularly engaging any intelligent thoughts, you can paint hundreds of paintings following youtube tutorials, but that doesn’t mean that you made good use of your creativity. (Just think about how we teach art at schools. How much room for inspiration do we leave for children and why do those who follow the instructions most closely get the highest recognition…) 

Creativity is not just what you think, or do, it is how you live. I know it sounds cheesy, but I’m not sure if there are better words. Creativity seems to be a way to relate to the world and you can’t just switch it off and on for the moment when you are in your studio or doing something so-called creative. Again, like intelligence, it does follow you everywhere you go. Just sometimes is more in our awareness. Now, you can surely choose not to act on inspiration (and that would be a whole long story as I suspect this choice is not particularly healthy in the long run), but you can’t just stop creativity altogether. 

So what is it? And does everybody has it? 

No serious psychologist would accept the proposal that creativity is energy. But it makes sense to understand it that way. It is an energy that drops into our minds with new ideas, it is the drive to make those ideas happen, it is something that happens between people and in cultures, it is dynamic rather than fixed and it is social rather than individual. It is something that happens in the spaces in between and never looks the same. And if we access it, nurture it and share it, then it grows and transforms. It makes things happen.

Creativity is a metaphor for magic. 

(Well, and for any academic enthusiasts, let's ponder on this a little bit longer. I suspect the answer will be somewhere in the sphere of psychodynamic, even though Freud himself gave up on it at some point. But that is a story for another day...)