In 1989, I saw a sign for a pumpkin carving contest at our local flower shop. I was five.
I intuitively knew I was supposed to enter the contest. I went home immediately, and, with a lot of help, carved a small pumpkin with a simple smile because it’s the idea that called to me.
The other pumpkins in the contest were VERY impressive, defying pumpkin-carving limits and outdoing each other in innovation and design.
So when my name was posted in the shop window as the FIRST-PLACE winner, and I won $50 (5-year-old equivalent of 1 MILLION DOLLARS) I was shocked. I ran home, changed into my best pink jellies and came back to the shop for press photos (i.e. my Dad. Was the press).
The judges said the pumpkin’s expression “spoke to them” and that they liked the honesty, heart, and simplicity of my design.
Five-year-old Liz experienced no procrastination. No self-doubt. No contorting myself into what I think people want. No shrinking to preserve others’ comfort.
I’m reminded how we are born with an innate knowledge of the creative cycle, while creative blocks are taught.
Can you remember a time when sharing your creative work felt intuitive and easeful? How old were you? What was it like to offer your gifts before the culture complicated it?
5 truths our younger selves teach us about creative process:
- Truth > innovation
- Answer the call
- Underthink it — whatever it is
- Don’t assume you know what people like. Work intuitively.
- Share your work
But why do we undershare our creative work? If sharing is a natural part of the creative process, why is it so hard?
Our souls long to be fully expressed by creating and sharing what is unmistakably ours — essential acts for our creative and spiritual health.
They are also the best strategy we have to stay human in the age of AI.
But because of what culture teaches us about our own value, our soul-callings shape-shift into a compulsion to be brilliant, innovative, and the best (Or, for all my fellow Eneagram 4s, to be THE BEST at being DIFFERENT), which paralyze our natural ability to freely flow through the creative cycle.
So we overthink the worth of our work, and we undershare it. And when the undersharing becomes a pattern, we develop a backlog of gifts waiting to be expressed. But watch any kid under five invite you to their living room performance/buy their painting/admire their city of blocks and you remember that sharing is a natuural part of the creative process.
When we undershare our gifts we…
- deprive others from experiencing truth, beauty, and things that will help their lives
- suffer from the psychic drain of holding back and staying in incubation too long
- put excessive pressure on the moment when we finally do share (instead of regularly flexing the muscle)
- lose opportunities, are underpaid for our work, and don’t go for things we want
These costs are significant, so why do we endure them? Of course, the cultural conditioning in the form of creative paralysis I mentioned is a reason. But/and. Social media has also revoked some of the aliveness of giving and receiving in the creative process, or at least severely complicated it. Sometimes we undershare as a way of avoiding the ethical complexity of platforms and staying true to our integrity and values.
The digital age has also conflated the timeless act of sharing our gifts with a kind of exhaustive and impossible to uphold 24-hour visibility. Sharing our work keeps energy and possibility flowing healthily through the creative process, but betraying our own needs to follow rules that no human body can actually sustainably follow does the opposite.
What happens when we reclaim the act of sharing our gifts from the algorithm? What if we separate the natural and human need to be fully expressed from the visibility machine? And how can we remember that sharing our gifts is not only an act of generosity, but also an act of receiving?
Invitation #7: Share your gift
In this season of harvest, what do you intuitively feel called to share? Consider what would happen if you shared your gifts with the same innate trust and confidence of your younger self, or the unstoppable confidence of an oak tree releasing its leaves.
In the spirit of experimentation, playfully divest from all the reasons why NOT to share and consider: Who might benefit from this? What if sharing is an act of generosity? How can I keep the channel open?
A bonus step: This week, re-share or amplify something of someone else’s. This brings energy to their ecosystem and to our community as a whole. It’s not only about the strategic value (which matters), but that every time we share someone else’s work, we are saying: I believe in what you’re doing. People need what you are offering. Keep going.
3 Prompts:
1. What gifts are ready to be released or shared? What’s stopping you? How can you keep the channel open?
2. What innate knowing does your younger self have for your current season of creativity? When you approach sharing as an act of giving and receiving, how does this change your approach to visibility?
3. Imagine finding a way to share your work and gifts in ways that align with your values and that regenerate your creative ecosystem. What if this were possible? What would change?
I think we need to turn on our radical imaginations as we collectively figure out ways to help each other reclaim our creative processes in the midst of AI and the tech broligarchy. I don’t have answers, but I am here for this questions.
Also, I don’t know about you, but sharing as an adult is such an EDGE for me. It awakens every primal fear I have about drawing attention to myself, not belonging, and the terror of being unliked.
But I have nothing more to learn about obeying these fears, so I’m focusing on learning from five-year-old me and taking Martha Graham’s advice. And when I can convince myself that the vulnerability is worth it, I’m always surprised by the unexpected magic that ensues.
When we share our gifts, we remember that the creative cycle is deeply relational. Sharing our gifts opens us up to connections we can’t conceive of.
And in case no one has reminded of this recently, your gifts are essential and unrepeatable. The truth and beauty you have to contribute matter, and the world needs them and you.
With big love and endless encouragement,
Liz
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3 Resources:
⚡️ ️ Election Day is this Tuesday, Nov 4th in the US! Here’s a great site to help everyone you know make a voting plan, and a genius resource with DM/text scripts you can send to people you know in key election states
️⚡️ A resource to find a local food pantry to donate to, if you are able
️ ⚡️A hopeful video on practical reasons why we need humanity and creativity in the age of AI
Quotes on my heart and mind:
1.
“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
— ANDY WARHOL
2.
“If we second-guess our inner knowing to attempt to predict what others may like, our best work will never appear.”
— RICK RUBIN
3.
“In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to, in turn, feel the need to be constantly visible, for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success. Do not be afraid to disappear, from it, from us, for a while, and see what comes to you in the silence.”
— MICHAELA COEL
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A note about AI and this letter:
This letter is a labor of love written by yours truly.
