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July 2020: fear and creative blocks

Hey there, how are you? I hope this newsletter finds you all well. This month's topic will be fear and how it blocks us creatively, separating us from our goals. A few weeks ago I did a poll on my Instagram account,  asking which where those creative fears and the response shocked me: although more than 250 people took part in the poll, all those fears could be separated in just 9 (in this order of popularity):

1. Not being good enough
2. To expose oneself, to show your creations
3. That someone will dislike our ideas
4. Destructive criticism. Being laughed at.
5. Making a fool of oneself in public
6. Running out of ideas
7. To fail
8. To be wrong about something and end up being exposed in front of someone
9. What the people we know IRL will think about the things we share online

8 out of those 9 fears are based more on other's judgements than on ourselves. Is it really such a big deal what others think about us that we are willing to stay still in our comfort zone before risking and doing that thing we so much desire? I can't promise you that this newsletter is gonna vanish all your fears, but I will make a point in the fact that you are not alone in being afraid, and also give you some valuable tools to try and face that fear when you feel it paralizing you. Shall we begin?
Three videos I found very inspiring to start making peace with the idea that fear is there for all of us and that the only way of getting over it is by doing stuff:
A song: Throw the fear
Throw the fear is a song by Tom Rosenthal that talks about what its title says: throwing out fear, daring to be doers, leaving your old history behind and being bold enough to dare to reinvent yourself. I find the video amazing as well, it was all made with one shot, the dancer is amazing and the choreography gets you in a really happy mood. I think it's a nice way to start this month's recommendations: put this song on, dance to it with all your heart and throw the fear, throw the fear, let the day become the year, you're alive, I'm alive, we're alalalalalalive. Watch the video

A short movie about passion y fear: Pathfinder
If you have 10 spare minutes do yourself a favor and watch this: Pathfinder fills your veins with energy and a strong desire to kick your fear in the nuts. It's the real story of a group of first level slackliners that climb a mountain in Norway in extreme weather conditions looking for the northern lights in order to slackline between them. "The more you expose yourself to your fears, the less fear you have" Watch Pathfinder

 
Frannerd: Too scared to start, to sell, to post

Frannerd is a chilean illustrator that currently lives in New York. She's really talented and successful in what she does,  and one could think that someone who's at that point in her career doesn't have to dwell on fears or insecurity anymore... Well, surprise: that's not true. She (as we all do) struggles constantly with insecurities and fears. "Everybody is feeling scared right now about something, it's how you deal with those scary thoughts that define you. It gets easier each and every day, if you're dealing with it" See the video.



Three tools that can help you throw the fear and dare to create something new in spite of it:

A speech full of practical advice by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman, the master pen behind stories like Sandman, Coraline, American Gods and Neverwhere, gave a speech for the University of the Arts Class of 2012. In it he touches all of the fears I received via stories: fear of failure, of being wrong, imposter syndrome, living with your head in the next step instead of enjoying the present successes... 20 perfect minutes of genius inspiration. I hope you love it as much as I did. Watch the speech

An anti-hater resource: The Benjamin Franklin Effect
Since almost all of the creative fears I received were related to other's opinions of ourselves, haters and destructive critics, I thought I could share with you a technique crafted by Benjamin Franklin himself to deal with this kind of situations.
When someone comes and expresses you directly that he's not interested in you or what you create putting special effort in letting you know about this, he's indirectly expressing some sort of dependency towards you. In a twisted way he or she is letting you know that he or she respects you by letting you know he or she doesn't (don't take my word for this, this is danish philosopher 
Søren Kierkegaard's idea). 
The thing with Benjamin Franklin started with a hater he had (yes, haters and trolls have existed for a loooong time) who was constantly letting him know he didn't respect him. What Franklin strategically did, instead of getting back at him, was asking him for a favour. Yes, a favour! He wrote him a letter saying he was looking for a very rare book and that he heard he was very well read. The hater's reaction? He run to find that book, gave it to him and since them completely changed his attitude towards him (they even became friends). If you do someone you don't like that much a favour, that generates a cognitive dissonance in your head, which gets unconsciously balanced by liking that person a bit more. Besides, when someone respects or admires you but mixes those feelings with envy and rage (because you're talented, intelligent or simply because you dared to do something he or she didn't), by asking him/her a favour you are leveraging the situation. You are letting this person know "you can also help me" and that completely changes the rules of the game. Of course Benjamin Franklin effect doesn't work 100% on internet trolls (most of this people are too coward to show their real identities) but I think it's a very interesting way of seeing things and a good resource for real life.

A platform to train self exposure: Lunchclub
I used Lunchclub a lot at the beginning of the pandemic to broaden my contacts in Germany and also to practice my people skills by interacting with people I've never seen before and telling them about my work. It consists in 1 on 1 online 45 minute talks with professionals who are relevant to your work field (the platform matches you). It usually has a waiting list to get in and you need to apply, but it may be a good way to shake the exposure fear off with an unknown person you may never even see in real life or on the internet again. Visit Lunchclub

I launched a Patreon a few days ago and the fear of exposing myself invaded many nights and mornings. What if nobody likes my idea? What if they criticise me? What if my work doesn't pay off?
When I received all of those creative fears via Instagram I realized I was not alone: we are all sometimes paralysed by other's opinions and judgments, and whoever says they don't care about that is either lying or a sociopath. We don't need to aim at not caring about what others think of us, that will only fill us with guilt and frustration by trying to repress a natural feeling, what I believe we need to strive to achieve is to dare to create in spite of that feeling. I found it really useful to write down on paper what I had to gain and what to lose by launching my Patreon. By doing this I realised how amazing the positive possible outcomes were (helping others transit their creative paths, creating a community where we can all learn from each other, generate an income source which doesn't depend on commercial clients) and how absolutely irrelevant to my future the negative possible outcomes were (a negative comment on Instagram, that nobody joins and I have to start a new project). Putting this things in perspective, other people's opinion start losing strength to our eyes and by doing so we also gain the courage to close our eyes, jump into the water... and then seeing what happens.


"This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been during the last several decades in this country. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair" Rollo May - The courage to create

I hope you enjoyed this month's newsletter and that you found it useful to get over those fears that block your creativity. We're all in this together. And hey, there are more than 3.500 subscribers right now reading this newsletter! Feel free to share it with whoever you may think could find it useful (here is the landing page where new subscribers can join from). Last but not least, I told you a few paragraphs before that I opened a Patreon account. It is thought to be a creative shelter, and during the month of august we will be working on creative fears as well. If you want to learn more and join this community (it's in spanish) or if you don't want to join the community but like this newsletter so much you'd like to help me with 1 euro a month to pay its costs, you can find more information at www.patreon.com/labaumhaus

Thank you for being there. See you next month!
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