Why Can't I Take Creative Risks?
The Pattern
You have a range of creative work that reliably produces acceptable results. You return to that range. The experiments you make tend to be modest: variations within the known territory rather than genuine departures from it. The big creative leap, the work that would require you to be genuinely imperfect in public, the attempt at something you might fail at: these get planned but not executed, or started and abandoned, or started and not shared. The familiar is safer than the risk. The familiar is also, eventually, a kind of creative atrophy. Perfectionism as risk-avoidance is not primarily about standards. It is about protection. The perfectionist does not stay in known territory because they are rigorous. They stay there because the unknown territory has an unreliable outcome, and an unreliable outcome means possible failure, and failure means exposure of the imperfect self. The safety of the familiar creative approach is the safety of knowing what you will produce before you produce it, which protects against the possibility of the work revealing something about you that you cannot control. The fear of the imperfect self being exposed is the wound underneath the creative risk-avoidance. The imperfect self is the self that is still learning, still making mistakes, still in process: the version of yourself that is undeniable if you produce genuinely experimental work. In the familiar range, the self is competent and managed. In the unfamiliar range, the self is a beginner again, which is where the wound lives. Safety in the familiar creative approach has another dimension: the familiar produces a predictable level of recognition and response. If you have established yourself in a particular creative range, departing from it risks losing the recognition that the familiar range has produced. The audience that loved the known work may not follow you into the new territory. This is a real cost, and the fear of it is legitimate. It combines with the wound material to produce a risk-avoidance that is doubly reinforced.
Origins & Context
Carol Dweck's research on fixed versus growth mindsets is directly applicable to creative risk-taking. The fixed mindset, the belief that abilities are innate and fixed rather than developable, produces exactly the creative risk-avoidance described here: the person with a fixed mindset stays in the territory where their ability is proven because the unfamiliar territory risks revealing a limit that would reflect on their fundamental capacity rather than on their current development.
Csikszentmihalyi's research on flow identifies the edge between skill and challenge as the optimal creative territory: the point where the task is difficult enough to be engaging but not so difficult as to produce overwhelming anxiety. For people with wound-based creative risk-avoidance, the challenge dimension triggers the wound material before the flow state can develop. The challenge reads as threat before it can read as opportunity.
Brene Brown's research on wholehearted creativity, discussed in 'Daring Greatly,' identifies the willingness to be seen in imperfection, to show up and be visible even when the outcome cannot be controlled, as the essential act of creative courage. Her work suggests that the creative block is not a craft problem but a vulnerability problem: the inability to tolerate the exposure that genuine risk-taking requires.
The work you have been afraid to make is probably the work that matters most. The fear is the compass, not the verdict.— Nikita Datar
How It Shows Up
You have work that you have wanted to make for years: the book in a different genre, the musical experiment, the visual departure, the piece that would require you to publicly be a beginner. You can describe this work in detail. You have not made it.
You make conservative creative choices that you know in advance will work, and feel a vague dissatisfaction with the resulting work even when it is objectively good. The dissatisfaction is the part of you that knows you did not go where you needed to go. The safety was not free.
When you do take a genuine creative risk, the anxiety during the making process is disproportionate to the ordinary discomfort of difficult work. It is the wound's anxiety, not the craft's: the fear that what is produced will reveal something about you that you cannot then take back.
You admire the work of people who take creative risks more readily than you do, and the admiration has a quality of longing in it: you know that is where the most alive work happens, and you cannot quite get yourself there. The admiration is the part of you that knows what is possible, looking at someone who is doing it.
Named in the Literature As
Named in the Literature As: Fixed vs. Growth Mindset in Creative Work (Carol Dweck), Perfectionism as Risk-Avoidance (Brene Brown), Flow and Challenge-Skill Balance (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi), Creative Courage and Vulnerability (Brene Brown), Shame-Based Creative Conservatism (various arts therapists). Related entries in this library: why-i-hide-my-creative-work, why-i-procrastinate-on-what-matters-most, why-being-seen-feels-dangerous, why-i-cannot-finish-what-i-start
Nikita's Note
The creative risks I most regret not taking are the ones I was most afraid of, which is its own piece of information. The fear was proportionate to the importance of the territory. The things that mattered most produced the most protective avoidance. Understanding this helped me to use the magnitude of the fear as a compass rather than as a stop sign: the bigger the fear, the more likely it is pointing toward something worth making.
The work you have been avoiding making is probably the most important work you will do. The risk is the invitation, not the obstacle.
From the work
The work you have been afraid to make is probably the work that matters most. The fear is the compass, not the verdict.From You Are the Love You Seek by Nikita DatarAbout this book
Related Concepts
More in The Pattern Atlas
See all in The Pattern Atlas →I wrote about this in You Are the Love You Seek — available on Amazon.