Balancing Creativity & Structure
Balancing creativity and structure may seem like a paradox, but to me it's the secret to living an integral and successful life. It's about finding a personal rhythm between freedom and discipline, ideas and practicality, inner world and outer world.
I’ve been balancing and dancing between structure and creativity for almost 10 years now, and I wanted to share with you some things that have worked in my own balance.
Always remember the purpose behind your creative process.
Is there a productive purpose (you’re searching for an outcome) or is it for mere personal exploration? If you feel lost in the process, go back to the purpose to gain clarity. Is what you are doing in fact attending to that purpose or have you entered a creative loop? Gaining clarity will help you move forward.
If the purpose is personal exploration with no productive end, don't put pressure on the process or yourself.
There’s nothing worse than putting pressure in something you’re doing for mere pleasure. This is often the dilemma creatives have when building a business or brand. They start with the purpose of personal exploration / mere pleasure but they actually do want or expect something from it (sales for instance). Well —if it is something you want to do for mere pleasure, don’t expect a result, just enjoy it and see what comes out of it. If you do want something from it (productive purpose), then be honest with yourself and incorporate it into your process, it’ll save you a lot of inner conflict.
Take a step back from time to time to see if you’re really moving forward and closer to what you feel you want or envision, or if you are stuck.
I’ve been stuck in numerous occasions and for long periods of time, and it can get really frustrating. Sometimes we just need to pause for a while, let it rest, and try something else. So try to be self aware in this sense and follow your intuition. Pausing the process or ‘not finishing it’ doesn’t mean that what you did so far was in vain —it just means you need a bit of air. Give the process a bit of air, and come back to it when you feel light again.
Be patient with your creativity.
I know it might sometimes feel like an endless loop —it’s just the time the thought or process needs to achieve it’s culmination. Creative processes are often chaotic until they suddenly just come together (at least that’s my experience). So I learnt to trust the process. Don’t rush it or push it, the culmination will come.
Remember that creativity brings out distinctiveness and uniqueness, and structure provides the framework for this uniqueness to take form and turn into reality. We need to find our own rhythm and learn to balance both in our lives —sometimes we need to trust the process, sometimes we need to be aware enough to re-direct. In any case, know that a whole lot of us are trying to find that balance too, it’s not easy, but when we find it, when we’ve manage to see it’s culmination, it’s such a rewarding feeling, isn’t it?
