Reducing the perception of creative fear

Threat level is a term commonly used in the field of counterterrorism.

Governments will have a color coded advisory scale, such as red for severe, orange for high, yellow for elevated, and brown for shit your pants. Most of these systems have been criticized as being vague and ineffective. Some politicians and pundits claim they’re better at causing people to be scared than telling people how to proceed.

And from a cultural scale, they’re probably right.

But from a personal creativity management standpoint, the concept of threat level is actually quite useful. Because much of our work in bringing our ideas to form is reducing the perception of fear. It’s less about competence and more about confidence.

As my yoga teacher used to say, you don’t always need to get better, just less threatened.

Here are a few tools that can be helpful in reducing the threat level of your work.

The first one is called enlisting, which is when you transfer the architecture behind your core talent to an overwhelming task. It’s especially useful for tasks or projects when you’re doing things that don’t come naturally to you. Instead of allowing accepting that you’re in over your head, you ask yourself, what part of me could be enlisted to make the unnatural natural?

That’s been a lifesaver for me on my occasions. I’ve been able to use my gift of writing to lower the threat level of even the most intimidating tasks.

A similar tool is called gravitational order, in which you use motion to create equilibrium so your creative work finds its place in the universe. Instead of worrying yourself sick about getting everything right, you simply get them moving in the right direction.

Even if you’re not ready enough, smart enough, experienced enough, whatever enough, you take action on your creative work for five minutes. That’s it. A few strokes here, a couple of notes there, a line or two of code here, and you’ll see that your creations always tend to their equilibrium. By virtue of motion, the threat level will go from red to yellow to green right before your eyes.

Both of these tools share a powerful spiritual commonality: Start small and the path will illuminate itself.

Take it from someone who has worked many jobs in which he was completely out of his depth and managed to execute anyway. Regardless of your perception of fear around the work, once you start taking action with whatever energy is in you, leverage that tight feedback loop that rewards speed and initiative, you will be able to move your creative work forward.

Even if the threat level is brown, nothing will be able to scare you shitless out of making progress.

How will you recognize and remove the resistance that inhibits your creative process?