Your Elusive Creative Genius

Gloria Hansen here.

This is a favorite TED talk that I shared on my gloriahansen.com blog more than a few years back.  It's by Elizabeth Gilbert – author of a favorite book, Eat, Pray, Love, on nurturing creativity.

In my original post I talked about how Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.

She talked about the success of her book and people now asking her “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll never live up to your prior success … that you’ll be a failure?”

She goes on to discuss how creativity was originally looked upon as an outside entity that visits one and graces it with a bolt of inspiration.  The Romans referred to creativity as genius.  Again, an outside force that would possess one with inspiration.  At one point things changed.  “We went from having a creative genius to being a creative genius.” And with that comes a lot of pressure, suffering, and despair.  She talked about the “painful reconciliation” people go through when success comes along and then wanes.

I periodically watch this video because it's a gem. It reminds me that rather than sitting in that painful place where I feel like I'll never be creative again, and playing in my mind all of those dark thoughts that can quickly sabotage good energy,  I just need to get busy and do the work.  Here's to showing up, doing the work, and finding your elusive creative genius.