Does Creative Fear Mean Stop or Go?

Any kind of creative work or business building continually takes us to the edge of a cliff. On one side is the sh*tty world you’ve known so far. On the other is everything you might want, things that might kill you, and existential terror.

Over and over again, we have to choose to step into that gap. With the fear. With the high probability of failure. With our instincts intact.

The trouble is, we can’t tell the difference between the instinct that this path is wrong, that something big is waiting over there to eat us, and the instinct that this path is right and good, because we’re so scared already.

We need tools for seeing and dealing with the fear (of the wrong path and the unknown, respectively) and the love (of the right path and the work itself).

Why We Need to See Ourselves Now More Than Ever

The old way of working in the world is breaking. We can’t rely on the “go get a job” wisdom of the last century any more.

More and more of us are realizing that we need to do our own authentic creative work, build an audience, and/or start a business, if we are going to find any kind of meaning or security in what we do every day.

But when you’re doing any kind of creative work or building a business, one of the problems that constantly comes up is:

How do I know I’m on the right track?
How do I tell the difference between fear that isn’t productive and fear that’s part of the process?
How do I tell if this feels good to me, if I’m enjoying this, if I love this — or if I’m just enjoying a superficial part of it, or if this feelings gonna go away in a few minutes?

This is an ongoing issue.

Part of the reason that we can’t tell whether what we feel is a good thing or a bad thing, helpful or not, is because we are using the wrong level of thinking to judge it.

Three Levels of Thinking

So there are three levels of thinking.

Dan Koe lists them as the conformist, individualist, and synthesist in his Human 3.0 framework:

1) Conformist: External authority, rule-based thinking, security through tradition, assigned perspective

2) Individualist: Internal authority, rational thinking, security through achievement, personal perspective

3) Synthesist: Contextual wisdom, paradoxical thinking, security through acceptance, multi-perspectival

Here’s my take:

The first level is dogma, or accepting whatever you’re told, basically.
Second is science, proof, research. It seems like it’s more advanced, but really you’re still using the science or the proof as the provider of dogma — it’s the giver of the absolute truth, rather than really digging and questioning to figure things out for yourself.
Last is the systems thinker. At this level, you can moving between many different perspectives, many different points of view, seeing their value on a meta level, and determining if they help or not. And one of its most important assets is that it can take felt experience — it can take somatic, body-level awareness — and turn that into information for where you want to go, whether something’s working or not. It sees the value in that rather than rejecting it out of hand because it hasn’t been proven by research from an outside source.

Most of the advice that we’ve been given about how to live a life, how to create, how to build a business, comes from level one or two thinking. Either everyone gets a job because you should, or everyone gets a job because research shows that if you don’t, you’re going to die of starvation.

This creates problems on multiple levels.

One of the traps we often fall into in trying to create meaningful work is that we treat level three information as level two information.

We’re basically trying to fit something (like the inner experience of meaningful work) – that naturally exists in context, in a somatic sense, amidst other conflicting feelings – into a proven, repeatable, rule bound process. And it’s not.

So if someone tells you “do work you love,” then you go out and try to do whatever you feel like — you love it right now, and then you end up very confused because you love something different in 15 minutes. Right now you love writing; pretty soon you’re going to love your lunch, and then you’re gonna love walking your dog.

It’s something that rotates, because felt experience rotates, which is why we need a higher level of thinking to understand what this means.

In another sense, if you’re continually using rational proof to determine how a feeling works, whether it’s a good feeling or a bad feeling, you’re cutting yourself off from a whole level of awareness and information as far as what that feeling is telling you.

Astrology: A Synthesist Understanding of Feelings

Astrology, for example, has a lot of really useful ideas for explaining internal states.

However, I only really like to do personality-based astrology – not predictive – because, frankly, I don’t think we’re smart enough to figure out what the larger patterns for our lives are anyway without the placebo effect screwing us up.

But, I have a lot of internal conflict about talking about astrology, primarily because of level one and two thinking.

On one hand, if you accept astrology as dogmatic truth — you absolutely will meet a tall dark handsome stranger next Thursday — you’re going to be disappointed.

Likewise, if you look for rational repeatable proof for astrology, you will also often be disappointed – because the tall dark handsome stranger did not show up on Thursday; just your elderly neighbor, Tim, and his poodle.

Most people leave it there: either they absolutely believe, or they use physical proof as a way to absolutely reject.

Both are wrong.

The systems thinker can see that, on one hand, astrology does provide an interesting, valuable, and nuanced language for what’s happening inside of you.

However, that internal status does not hold up to rational external proof the same way that your dog salivating when you feed him biscuits does (thanks, Pavlov).

Instead, we have to use nuance, we have to use somatic information — the felt experience in your body, how your emotions feel — as nuanced sources of information. You have to actually pay attention to them and say, “oh well, how does it feel when I do this? How does it feel when I do that?” You have to notice and remember what it felt like last time, and notice when it changes and pay attention to what causes it to change.

This is essentially how we “prove astrology.” If you’re going to see if it’s valuable or not, you have to address it at the level of felt experience, contradictions, and use multiple perspectives for reference.

Looking at astrological interpretation through a meta lens also means considering that whoever just interpreted your astrology is a regular flawed human being with some areas of wisdom and some areas of stupidity who is entirely prone to f*cking up, just like everyone else.

So you have to consider: “Was this interpretation good? Let’s do some research. Maybe this interpretation could be better. Maybe there’s a different way of understanding or describing this felt internal somatic experience so that it does make sense.”

Developing a language for exploring the internal terrain – and sensing out what works and doesn’t – is more important than passing a judgement that will make you feel safe and right.

What This Means for Creative Work

One of the biggest problems in doing creative work and building a meaningful life is that your biggest compass is a felt somatic internal experience.

Do you love it? Does it make you happy? Do you get into flow?

This is confusing as sh*t, because half the time, if not more, everything creative is actually terrifying. You are stepping into doing something new, you’re being vulnerable with weirdos on the internet. You don’t know how people will take this. You don’t know if it’s a good idea, you don’t know if you’re wasting years of your life on a completely idiotic endeavor.

It’s hard to tell if you love something when you’re stepping into the unknown, and the unknown inherently always contains fear.

It’s confusing because sometimes it’s boring, sometimes it’s annoying, sometimes the thing just doesn’t move today. Sometimes you’re procrastinating, and there’s 10 million other things that you would rather be doing.

And you constantly have to re-choose to do the thing you love.

It’s a bit like a long-term relationship, actually.

Sometimes love is a choice to sustain something that you know you care about, rather than a thrilling compulsion. And of course, there’s this perpetual doubt of, “is this something that I love that much, is it worth this trouble? Or is this boredom and distraction — a sign that I should be going elsewhere?”

Figuring out the difference is the work.

We Need Tools to Navigate an Emotional, Somatic Landscape

Ultimately, our understanding of our own emotions sucks.

In the last hundred years, humanity has made huge advances with problems like space travel, ruptured spleens, and blowing big things up.

But we have made almost no advances in trying to figure out what our fear is telling us, what healthy love is supposed to feel like, or how to tell what work is meaningful for you.

That’s the project here – building tools and systems for navigating an emotional, internal landscape that we NEED to guide us.

It was always supposed to.

To get us from confused as hell, to knowing who we are, what it feels like to want what we want, and actually doing the stuff necessary to get it.

To work is not just having the courage to stand in the unknown woods for a while everyday, but building the instincts and courage to navigate it. And get to the other side better for it.