How many of your friends, colleagues and family members truly support your creative life?
Even though they want the best for us, sometimes our friends and family can actually cause hurt or harm with a casual comment or a disinterest in our creativity. In time, these can build up and lead to serious limitations in what and how we create.
So here are 5 ways to tell when your friends are sabotaging your creativity:
1. They say "How's that little hobby of yours coming along?". For those who don't create, it can all seem a mystery that others spend so much time on it. They can only comprehend it as an obsessive hobby and not a way of being, living and experiencing life. "Hobby" is them trying to put what you do into a logical compartment in their head. "Little" is just trying to dismiss the importance of creativity in your life because it's not important in THEIR life.
2. They tell you how "successful" all the people you were at school or college with have become. Things like: "Ooh did you hear, Annie's just got promotion in her insurance company, she's now Senior Team Leader, Bizarre Claims Division...". Though they're not talking about you directly, the implication is that "Annie is doing better than you, when are you going to stop messing around with art stuff and get a proper boring job like the rest of us?"
3. They say "You're not still doing that weird arty stuff are you?". Even worse is when they use an extended and pronounce "still" in this sentence, in the same way people say "You're not STILL sucking your thumb like you did when you were 3 years old are you?". Again, it seems to be a complete mystery (or even something abnormal!) that anyone would continue to create art, because they either don't, or can't, do it themselves.
4. They say "How many rich sculptors/painters/writers do you know?". Again the power of this is in what's implied. Their attitude is that the only success in life is measured by financial wealth, and they can not comprehend that you don't create to make yourself a millionaire, but because it's in integral part of your life, your heart and your soul.
5. When you show them new artwork they pull that "I don't know what on earth this is but how can I try to look interested?" kind of face. We often hope our friends will "get" our art and be effusive in their praise in a way that makes us feel they know exactly what we were trying to express. We don't help ourselves when, despite dozens of the above incidences of the face pulling, we still keep going to the same friends in the vain hope that one day they'll understand.
How many of the above do YOU recognise?
How much more free to create would you feel if you didn't have these kind of reactions and conversations?
You have essentially two choices. Either you keep telling your friends and family about your creativity and artwork in the hope that one day they'll suddenly be completely understanding and supportive. Or you quietly get on with creating what matters to you, and in the meantime seek out the kind of creative communities full of people with the same kind of creative passions you have, that will support, not sabotage, your creativity. The choice is yours.
Want to learn more about how to increase YOUR creativity? It's easy: just sign up to "Create Create!" - Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin's free twice monthly ezine - today, and get your free copy of the "Explode Your Creativity!" Action Workbook. Head on over now to http://www.CoachCreative.com.
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