Creativity's Essential Element -- The Shared Challenge All Creatives Face

Creativity is the use of the imagination to bring something new into existence, to invest with new form, to find a solution to problems that had no such solution before. It's crossing the boundary between what we know and what we have yet to understand.

Whether working from an existing form or a blank page or no page at all, there is an element that needs to be present for creativity to flourish. This element is essential. At the same time, it's one of the greater challenges to overcome. What is this element present in all forms of creativity?

Uncertainty.

(Photo by Ronald Cuyan on Unsplash)

It is the same element that all creatives face, regardless of their field or their endeavour. Don't worry. It isn't there all the time. It's an essential piece of the creative process. When does the creative process require it? The creative process requires uncertainty in those moments when we have a question for which the answer is unknown.

The creative moment.

The range of all possible values within which the true value of the measurement lies, creativity requires a freedom that manageable uncertainty provides.

Author Claire Dorotik-Nana writes: "What makes the difference is our ability to tolerate the uncertainty needed to find the one creative solution that will work."

She goes on to state that: "Uncertainty also is where we find the very cognitive flexibility that creativity depends on. Creativity, after all, is about bending the rules. It's about perceiving things as they have not yet been perceived. It's about positioning reality in a way that it has not yet been positioned."

Uncertainty is essential to creativity. You don't know where you're going to go because you've never been there before.

There is an analogy of creativity as a helicopter. A helicopter can hover in the sky. And when its hovering it has the ability to move in any direction. For creativity to be at its maximum, it needs to have the same capacity as that helicopter. Creativity needs to be able to move in any direction. If you can get to that space where any direction is possible, you are maximizing creative capacity.

This can present a challenge as human beings have a primal evolutionary response to uncertainty that triggers this little thing we call"fear." Our limbic system kicks in and, like an ancient ancestor in unfamiliar territory, we are on a heightened alert until we can return to the calm of the familiar.

If we recognize that feeling for what it represents, we can turn it to our great advantage. That feeling happens when we are at the threshold of what we know. It signals the boundary. We can choose to turn back or we can cross that boundary between what we know and what we have yet to understand.

10 Methods for Managing Uncertainty

1. Be clear on the question or the parameters for the solution beforehand.
2. Practice a relaxation method earlier in the day (meditation, mindfulness, a calming shower).
3. Work through uncertainty for a set and short amount of time (5 - 20 minutes).
4. Divide a larger creative task into smaller pieces that can be accomplished in your chosen time frame.
5. Approach uncertainty with a sense of adventure and play.
6. Congratulate yourself for having found a threshold.
7. Recognize that dealing with uncertainty is the key to unlocking extraordinary results in your work and your life.
8. Trust yourself in the process and give your intuition space.
9. Share the gems you bring back with you.
10. Know that anyone who has ever created anything truly new has gone through this process.
    

(Photo by Terry Tan De Hao on Unsplash)

Those with the daring and the courage to cross are the ones who bring boons to us all. They are the ones who move us forward.

As Margaret Drabble writes: “When nothing is sure, everything is possible.”