Maladaptive behaviours can hinder our creative growth
Our desire to create isn't just an artistic phenomenon...
To find out more about this month’s online workshop, or watch my recent interview with writer James Canton, please scroll down to MY OFFERINGS.
“Our desire to create isn’t only an artistic or intellectual phenomenon. It’s deeply rooted in our very nature, driving us to grow.”
IT’S A LITTLE after five in the morning as I stand on the bridge watching the sun come up, the wide river gushing beneath me. This whole experience is a perfect metaphor for the creative process and how we can fulfil our potential as unique, authentic voices in the world.
Firstly, we require grounding - both my feet are widely planted.
Secondly, we must sense our feelings - the river flows beneath me, just like the waters of my creativity flow through me.
Thirdly, we must allow our unique self to expand and shine - fresh beginnings of light are lifting from between the trees.
It's our nature to grow, to lift towards the sun. This urge is part of what we feel when we’re drawn to create. More and more, I’m coming to understand that our creativity is intricately linked to our inherent, biological drive to evolve, meaning our desire to create isn’t only an artistic or intellectual phenomenon: it’s deeply rooted in our very nature, driving us to grow.
BOTH EVOLUTION AND creativity are processes of change and progress, reflecting humanity’s inherent quest for improvement and meaning.
As I watch the rising sun, I notice how it transforms the sky, tinting and brightening the atmosphere, turning clouds to fire.
The shift from darkness to light is an important part of our journey: our creative expressions can bring clarity to thoughts and emotions, bringing insightful perspectives to areas that were previously unclear.
Now, the flat silhouette of the land all around me begins to find form. I see the rumpled shape of the meadow to my right, the pale mounds of sheep still sleeping beneath a cluster of trees.
The rising sun alters the landscape, just as our rising urge to create has the power to transmute. Not only can the writing process change ideas and raw emotions into a structured narrative, enabling us to grow in the process, but our words can impact others, giving them the power to lift the world out of darkness.
This is everyone’s creative gift!
Unfortunately, we can get a little stuck on this mammoth quest. It’s easy to put this down to our own fault or lack. We don’t have the confidence, we’re not good enough, or disciplined enough.
I think it helps to consider biology.
OVER TIME, MANY genetic variations and mutations have occurred. Populations or organisms have shown remarkable ingenuity in how they adapt to their environments. From camouflage and mimicry to symbiotic relationships and complex behaviours, creativity can advance a species, and even lead to the emergence of new ones.
As a creative soul, do you feel you’re adapting to the world around you in a way that’s heightening or hindering your growth?
As much as the urge to create is there to guide us to realise our full potential, maladaptive behaviours can misapply this intuitive drive, thwarting our potential.
An organism’s instinct to camouflage itself, such as the way leaf-tailed geckos have bodies that resemble leaves (complete with leaf-like veins and edges) can help them avoid predators. For us, however, excessive conformity can act as a barrier, inhibiting us from fully revealing our unique talents and capabilities – even to ourselves! – thereby limiting our creative potential.
The viceroy butterfly mimics the appearance of the monarch butterfly, which are toxic to predators because of the milkweed they consume, ensuring their survival. As a creative, this innate impulse to mimic serves us less well. Not only does it result in a lack of originality, but we can also suffer from the pain (whether conscious or not) of inauthenticity as our innate creative impulses are supressed.
Clownfish live among the tentacles of sea anemones, getting protection from predators while the anemones benefit from the cleaning and increased water circulation provided by the clownfish. We can become overly reliant on feedback or support, which then stifles our individual growth as we struggle to progress without external validation. We might also compromise our vision to meet with others’ expectations.
The veined octopus collects coconut shells and uses them as portable shelters. We too are drawn to complex behaviour in order to problem solve, but we can become trapped in these processes – such as scrolling on Instagram as a way to tolerate our unwieldy feelings, or bing-watching Netflix in order to manage our creative blocks.
I LEAVE THE bridge and continue to walk through the valley, now entering a large wheat field. I listen to the surround sound of birdsong, picking out the repetitive chant of a cuckoo, the glugging warble of a pigeon.
I swish through the damp grass, navigating around the many snails and slugs on the path as I ponder my own creative urges as a deeper biological drive. As well as my desire to create stories and videos, there’s another urge I’ve carried for nearly two decades, which I’ve intermittently tuned into and let guide me. It’s the inkling there’s something afoot with the creative process.
Twenty years on from this inkling, I see how it has grown from a source of itchy discomfort to a source of light.
If we take the octopus, the clownfish, the butterfly, the gecko, we see how they were all responding to discomfort in some way: an intimidating predator, a harsh environment. I too responded to the ‘itch’. At first, I couldn’t define what it was – only that something was bothering me about the collective creative process. At the time, I was running a series of workshops on a handful of Creative Writing MA programs, always nudged by a suspicion. I could only gauge the existence of this emerging creative drive in the way it prickled me.
This is often the way with an urge when it first arrives to encourage us to evolve. We sense something. We’re inexplicably drawn towards it. Slowly it fills our thoughts and even becomes the lens with which we view the world.
Or, it triggers maladaptive behaviours. Many of which I’ve had to work through myself.
Perhaps we’re afraid of how this urge might set us apart. We tone it down, try to make it look as much like others as we can. Nervous of going ‘all in’ on this urge, we unconsciously block ourselves and engage in a myriad of procrastination-themed pursuits.
Yes, we survive, but we do not evolve.
MY INKLING HAS been there in the background for a long time, but now it feels less camouflaged and more articulated than ever. You can see and hear it in this very piece of writing. It transformed from an itch to a belief. Rather than simply feel scratchy, I can now understand the desire we all feel to create is a magical evolutionary tug. This tug won’t only help us to grow as individuals, it will help us create a paradise here on earth.
In order to step into this divine potential, we need to develop a level of self-awareness that allows us to override our instincts to camouflage and mimic so we can stand out, rise up, shine.
I REACH THE top of the valley. Below me, the wheat is a few months off harvesting, resembling a sea of tall, dense grass. But then I notice a smattering of more advanced plants, which have already grown their ears and the signature tufts of hair. These outliers represent something essential: individuals who are prepared to go forward and push boundaries, embrace growth. They are the ones who have surrendered to the impulses stirring within and have nurtured those impulses the best they can.
Nurturing my own inklings has involved a deep, healing journey that has, bit by bit, enabled me to slough off all the unconscious, maladaptive behaviours, which were limiting me.
It isn’t that I no longer feel the fear I’m making a mistake with the direction I’m growing. I still have a sense I should fit in with what I see others doing. At times, I worry about being able to continue making a living. But I fully recognise these ‘negative tugs’ will pull me away from my true purpose.
I’ve ‘evolved’ myself beyond the unconscious tendency to be drawn towards darkness. Now, I embrace the light.
The ‘old me’, mechanically driven by maladaptive behaviour, would groan at the alarm clock, overwhelmed by a myriad of reflex urges to stay hidden, or camouflaged, in bed. Awareness has helped me transcend the story that I’m tired, it’s cold, I didn’t get enough sleep. No longer seduced by a ‘less than’ version of me, I sense my true, purposeful Self and allow myself to grow towards them.
As a result, it makes sense to get up at four-thirty so I can reach the river in time for sunrise. It makes sense to stand on the bridge and plant my feet. And when I do that, suddenly noticing the how the river gushes beneath me, and that my own waters and ideas are flowing freely, I realise that whenever I act according to my true nature I’m bathed in the most magical moments.
I watch the sun rise and know I’m doing all I can to enable to light within me to rise too.
MUCH OF THIS comes down to trust. The moment we can allow our creative urges to guide us (rather than struggle under the unconscious current of our maladaptive strategies) comes when we develop a belief we’re better off that way.
This doesn’t happen overnight. (Or, certainly not for me!)
Trust is not a vitamin we can take, or a one-off webinar. It’s not one chapter in a book, or a weekend workshop. It’s all those things, and more.
Getting my supplements right, ensuring my learning journey is carefully curated – that I’m consuming ‘nutritious’ content and keeping up with regular breathwork and meditation practice – has enabled me to reach a place where my uncomfortable inkling has turned into a guiding light.
This is why we’ll be tapping into trust in my workshop tomorrow as we work with the element of FIRE.
I remember thinking about fire this morning, as I watched the sun come up and set the clouds alight. This element is SO powerful. In an instant, what appeared to be patches of tiny, liquid water droplets in the sky became a mesmerising display of flames.
This profound transformation serves as a perfect metaphor for the healing many of us need in order to honour the creative drive within: the kind of healing that gives us a mystical experience of ourselves so that we experience how the monochrome of emotional hurts can turn to gold, and realise how magical we truly are.
As always, wishing you creative contentment.
Gabriela, tree goddess.
Offerings
In this section you’ll be able to hear about my offerings and events.
JOIN ME TOMORROW for my next online workshop - ‘Journaling, Breathwork and Nature Healing to Transform your Creative Process’ - on Thursday 23rd May at 6.30pm.
This month we’re exploring the element of FIRE. By overcoming confidence issues and reconnecting with our inner FIRE, we can greatly enhance our creativity and overall well-being. Working with this element can lead to deeper levels of energy and inspiration.
As a subscriber to Wild Muse, you can receive 20% off by using the code Wild01 at checkout.
WATCH MY LATEST YouTube Interview with WRITER James Canton.
We chatted about the connection between nature and wellbeing, and explored the emergence of urban landscapes in nature writing.
He also delved into his book ‘Grounded’ and the narrative choice to take the reader on his investigation into the landscapes of our ancestors.
We even touched on the importance of experiencing and sharing the sacredness of nature and the thrill of time travel through archaeological discoveries!