Creative Inquiry

Leaning in Creatively Beyond the “No”

Grit is the ability to persevere and continue to engage in the creative process, beyond where you are stuck or stopped. This capacity supports you to generate and expand your capacity for creativity, and identify powerful new ideas. Often we will feel the potential of our ideas, feel inspired, and motivated, and then at some point, we get stuck and give up generating solutions or ideas for moving forward in the creative process. This is the point where we feel like we “don’t know” how to move forward and have no ideas left. At this point, we need to develop the ability to have grit and go beyond the “no” or the place where we feel we have no more solutions.

The Key Shift for Developing Grit

When we get to the point of being stuck in the creative process, we tend to go into a fixed mindset. For example, “I don’t know, and therefore it’s not possible to know,” or “I can’t do it, and therefore it’s not possible to do it,” or “I don’t know how, therefore I can’t take actions or access any resources.” The key shift that supports you in developing grit as a creator is to notice our fixed mindset language and then adding the word “yet.” We disrupt the fixed mindset by adding the word “yet,” which takes us into possibility, receptivity, curiosity and wonder. For example, “I don’t know yet,” or “I can’t do it yet,” or “ I don’t know how to access the resources I need to succeed yet.”

As creators, we are developing the ability to persevere, be curious, receptive, and generate creative ideas beyond what feels natural and comfortable. For example: “I don’t know how to do it yet,” or “I wonder what different possibilities there are,” or “I wonder what it is.”

Growth Mindset

Another critical shift for developing grit is to notice the shame-based meanings that halt the creative process when we “don’t know”. There is pressure in our culture to know the answers. When we don’t know, we feel shame and make it mean something about ourselves. Then we want to give up, but instead, we can start to develop the growth mindset towards these places where we get stuck, creating new growth-based meanings to expand our capacity to be creative and move forward.

Leaning into Uncertainty

To support yourself to develop grit, you also need to lean into uncertainty. Feeling like we “don’t know” can create an uncomfortable sense of uncertainty, and that uncertainty is an inherent part of the creative process. The uncertainty makes it possible to create, whereas the need for certainty can stifle creativity. By learning to lean in and be more comfortable with uncertainty, we allow ourselves to open up to wonder, receptivity, and expand our capacity to be creative.

Purpose:

To develop the ability to have grit and expand your capacity for creativity when we are stuck or stopped in the creative process.

Step 1 - Identify and Shift

Think about something you are creating or generating now. For example, a website, brochure, book, or presentation. Then reflect on the following questions to identify and explore the place you usually get stopped in the creative process:

At what point in the creative process do you usually get stopped?

What comes up for you when you get stopped? What’s the deeper truth?

What will support you to move past the place you get stopped?

Step 2 - Identify New Ideas

Reflect on the following questions to identify and explore new ideas for moving forward in this creative project:

How could you move forward in this area?

What are 10 ideas for moving forward?

What’s another way you could explore or try?

Step 3 - Stretch Yourself to Discover New Ideas

Reflect on the following questions to stretch yourself even further to come up with new ideas:

What are another 10 ideas beyond where you usually get stopped?

What’s something you haven’t thought of yet?

What’s an idea that is in the back of your mind that you have dismissed because it feels crazy or unrealistic?

If you could create or do anything, what would you do?

Notice when you think thoughts like “I don’t know,” or “I can’t do this,” and then add “yet” to it and go past this point to continue to brainstorm more options and ideas. Be willing to lean into ambiguity, uncertainty, and not knowing!