Creativity Requires Discipline

For anyone deciding if they're ready to commit to the work they want to do

A lot of my teenage years were spent overthinking my GPA and missing too many hours of sleep finishing homework assignments. To give you an idea of the culture of my high school, it wasn’t an irregular occurrence to see people crying in the hallways over test scores and Ivy League waitlisting (years of being called “gifted and talented” one too many times puts you in a strange headspace). When I finished my senior year, I promised myself that I would never work that hard again. Looking back, it may not have been that I wasn’t willing to put in that level of effort but that I was unwilling to expend that type of effort: Doing copious amounts of work that felt needlessly draining, degrading, and out of alignment with who I am and what I care about.

The pure ecstasy of finishing high school!!

Like most of us, I was shaped in environments that taught me that everything worth having is right on the other side of consistently proving my ability to work hard, restrict joy, push past resistance, and get to the finish line. Regardless of how withered you are when you arrive, the end result is somehow worthwhile. Something about that narrative always felt off to me. A life spent miserably committing to a goal seemed…well…miserable. Thankfully, with small nudges from people around me and shaky yeses to new experiences, I found so many pockets of life that showed me there was another way to build a path forward. It no longer felt sufficient to become exceptional at things that would earn me praise and validation while sidelining and undermining the things that made me feel whole.

“For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of” - Audre Lorde in Uses of The Erotic

The older I get, the more I want every part of my life to align around that second story. As we became more serious about As You Are, I realized accessing that joy and alignment would require a greater commitment to the work. Despite my excitement, this also brought up a host of fears.

Discipline is scary because it requires our ongoing commitment to being vulnerable. To be seen taking something seriously and sharing it with the world is ultimately an admission that you care. That’s why so many of us work and plot and plan in secret. What would happen if someone witnessed us caring “too loudly” or with “too much excitement?” What if we stop and it doesn’t last forever? What if we have to admit to people we changed our minds or things didn’t go as planned?

Commitment has required me to ask new questions of myself: What will be lost by not showing up for the things that make me feel alive? Is that an experience I can afford to go without? Who benefits from the popular attitude of looking like we don’t care and are passionate about nothing? Are those people or structures I want to align myself with?

I’ve come to realize that if we get so consumed with fear or embarrassment, we ignore the fact that not committing to what we care about also comes at a cost. Last year, I saw a video entitled “Mediocrity is Exhausting.” In the video, the creator argues that many of us opt for not actioning on our goals because we don’t believe we’re ready to handle the work that comes with consistently being great, convincing ourselves that inaction is somehow safer. In reality, this too is “energy expensive.” They go on to argue that “all that work that you are afraid of doing re: being great means that you are going to be doing that same work trying to cope with the fact that you’re not doing anything worthwhile.”

@ismatu.gwendolynhaving now done both i would actually prefer trying and failing; at least in that process i am alive.

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While it’s difficult to hear, it resonates deeply. The things we give our time and energy to, day by day, become our lives. If we understand that, the question shifts from should I, can I, or will I pursue my work to something much bigger: What do I want to spend my life doing?

Working on creative projects has affirmed for me that while we are taught to associate discipline with lack, scarcity, and restriction, commitment can be incredibly generative, expansive, and life-affirming. The more work I produce on my own terms, the more comfortable I am with the practice of creation. Ideas flow easier and roadblocks pass faster. That euphoric feeling of work “clicking” in my mind comes more often than ever.

This is the embodiment of everything I’m trying to get across in this post. Thank you, Solange.

Discipline, when paired with the right pursuits, opens the doors for expression, not the opposite. My current read, The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin, says it best.

A river of material flows through us. When we share our works and our ideas, they are replenished. If we block the flow by holding them all inside, the river cannot run and new ideas are slow to appear.

In the abundant mindset, the river never runs dry. Ideas are always coming through. And an artist is free to release them with the faith that more will arrive.

If we live in a mindset of scarcity, we hoard great ideas...Choosing to live in scarcity leads to stagnation. If we work on one project forever, we never get to make another. The fear of drought and the impulse for perfectionism prevent us from moving on and block the river's flow. Each mindset evokes a universal rule: whatever we concentrate on, we get.

I hope you end this read feeling a bit more prepared to tackle whatever it is that lights you up. For me, that looks like showing up to a weekly working session, getting better and better at actually executing every item on the to-do-list Grace sends me after every meeting (thank you Grace), and building the infrastructure in my life to feel inspired, experiment, and actually release the work. Much like I’m doing with this one now- goodbye!

What does creative discipline look like in your life? How are you building the infrastructure to be successful in your pursuits?

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