How to overcome fears about your creative ideas and your work

My latest Love affair is the artist and former scientist Enrique Martinez Celaya. In one of his journal entries on his website he writes something so beautiful:

“I don't think of my work as being ABOUT something but as BEING something”

We have something in the mind-heart that we want so deeply to manifest and transform into something tangible that we can offer others, but then we forget that that creative idea, this very impulse, is not about something but it is already BEING something in itself. Now, what we need to do is simply to understand it. We simply need to unwrap it and unfold it and let it explain itself to us.

For that we need to understand what the roots that gave rise to this impulse, to this creative idea, are. Being excruciatingly honest with ourselves in regards to the roots and intentions of this impulse. This takes some enquiry that with the right questions will reveal and expose the foundations, the building blocks if you wish, for your work and offers.

To overcome fears around your creation you need to know why this idea matters to you, what difference it makes in your life. It is much easier to focus on the things that matter to you rather then focusing on overcoming fear. When you care about that which matters to you - you are taking the oxygen tubes from the body of fear.

Now you ask - “why should anyone else care about what I care?”

I asked this question for many years, years ago. There was a voice in me saying “It simply can’t be that you’re the only one on this world that cares about the things you care about!” I found that voice very comforting and by following it I’ve discovered it to be true.

We all ask the same existential questions in different forms and we all have existential answers that come in different forms. So there will always be room for other/new ways of presenting the answers of our inquiry around questions that matter.

And that, my lovelies, requires an eye-to-eye meeting with your feelings, giving them importance, knowing they are not a luxury (and it's about time to get over this idea) and fully embracing the understanding that your creation is already something. Instead of spending time in your studio, in your notebook, on your writing desk, in front of your painting canvas, the computer, thinking who the hell is going to be interested in your offerings -

Spend your time understanding that SOMETHING. And in front of your eyes it will become SOMETHING!.

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Painting: Enrique Martinez Celaya