Creative Failures
by Sally ~ October 26th, 2009. Filed under: creative process, creativity.
Is it luck, persistence, courage, or awareness that turns some people’s creative failures into success?
Perhaps it’s all of those things along with a willingness to be open to the process and learn along the way.
Have you ever had a project that didn’t go well and you ended up feeling that it was just a waste of time and energy because the outcome wasn’t what you wanted?
Wouldn’t it be more freeing to think about doing something without concern that it will be good enough or even successful in someone else’s terms? Wouldn’t it be more fun to just try and see what happens?
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
One story that I love comes from Oriah Mountain Dreamer in her book, What We Ache For. Half a class was told to make as many clay pots as possible and would be graded on the quantity they produced. The other half was told to make just one excellent pot and they would be graded on quality.
The half that made as many as they could, without concern about how good they were, ended up with better quality than the other half of the class that tried hard to make just one excellent pot.
They had better results because they allowed themselves to continue making pots, regardless of the outcome. They were free to experience the process without pressure and expectation. Through repetition, trial and error, and without concern for failures, they could learn from their mistakes and continue.
That is a powerful lesson in how striving for perfectionism or excellence can often be much more difficult to achieve, creating more pressure and stress than to allow yourself the chance to practice, to make mistakes, and to fail.
The more fun it is to practice, the more you will do it, and the better your outcome.
This is a concept that I am trying to keep in mind as I build my websites and blog, adding articles and resources, to offer encouragement and hope for people to use their creativity and most importantly to create a life they love. My friend, Paula, gave me the gift of calling it my online playground which helped me shift my preconceived notions of what it “should” be to something I could experiment with, changing, adding, and playing as I go to see what happens.
This simple change in thinking allows me to be more relaxed and have fun with the process.
I also notice the more playful I am when I am creating jewelry, the better I like the results.
How could you let yourself practice and open yourself up to unexpected outcomes so that all your creative failures become stepping stones of possibility?
November 4th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Interesting how we both wrote about failures/artistic process and pottery within days of each other. I swear I didn’t read yours first!
November 5th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Vaneessa,
We must just be on the same wave length!