Stoic Strategies for Being Creative

Being a creative is really about managing your own expectations.

It’s all about managing expectations. For yourself and your work.

Life is going to throw whatever it can at us. There are few easy days and few hard days; most days are just slalom ride through the a variety of challenges, skirmishes, and confusions.

And that’s for a person who isn’t trying to make a go at the arts!

Add all of that with the interminable desire to just make stuff and you’ve got a powder keg of mental health concerns.

I don’t know what a post-COVID world looks like (is there such a thing at this point?), but I do know that we a species are having a tough time navigating the “new normal.”

I don’t have any tips or suggestions. I’m dealing with the same issues, too: stress at work, stress at home, stress in relationships, and stress at not feeling (or being) what I believe I should feel (or be).

Is stoicism the answer? Don’t know. But what it does offer, and is outlined in the above video, is a framework or perspective for how to control the unfettered feeling of unrealized creative expectations.

Whatever your challenges, the only thing I can beg of you is to keep going. The struggle is real. The challenges are realer. That is why we must create: to show others that the muscle between the ears is the only thing standing between you and what you believe you ought to be.