Creator Interrupted
[Music]
your potential
as a creator is not born from your
simplicity
it’s born from your complexity from your
nuance
your contradiction and your messiness
you see as creators as those of us who
are
starting businesses and writing books
and launching movements
we are the modern day alchemists our
job is to turn nothing into something we
allow ourselves to be used as the
conduits for creation at scale
and so it only makes sense that we have
access to some kind of
potent power source some internal engine
that
fuels our potential and as we will come
to understand
that fuel is our complexity
it’s born from our ability to see our
strengths and our struggles
our blessings and our burdens our light
and our dark as all essential to our
creative process
as this optical illusion demonstrates
we need both the light and the dark to
see this creation
in its wholeness the renaissance masters
pioneered the style of painting
chiarskuro in which
the interplay of light and dark was used
to create
depth and beauty and mystery and
intrigue
and so too must we as creators use the
play of
our light and dark qualities to tap into
our full potency our full potentialities
as creative beings
these were a few of the things that i
started musing on a few years ago when i
was working in venture capital
and my job was to meet with thousands of
creators
from entrepreneurs to investors to
corporate innovators to creatives
and because of my background in
psychology and neuroscience i was able
to
quickly pick up on a few patterns and
trends in their way of being
the first thing that i was struck by was
the power of their bright
light qualities like a moth to a flame i
was
magnetized to their passion their
ambition their
risk tolerance and other bright
qualities that were so
foundational to their work as creative
beings
but in the same breath i became aware of
a
darker side of their nature it seemed as
though each and every one of their like
qualities went
hand in hand with an equal and opposite
dark compliment
and that none of their strengths could
truly be celebrated
without a nod to the murkier elements
that often sat just beneath the surface
i became aware of the depression the
distraction the delusion the addiction
the obsession the perfectionism imposter
syndrome
mental health issues stress-related
illness emotional dysregulation
existential angst
and generalized naughtiness that was so
prevalent
among creators and while i was floored
by the sheer depths of suffering i
witnessed
i quickly came to realize that creators
are just these wildly complex beings
they are
high and low optimistic and pessimistic
masculine and feminine logical and
creative
open-minded and critically minded
insanely productive
and humorously unproductive and other
poles of
experience that seem as though they
shouldn’t exist within the same being
and yet
when harnessed properly this complexity
and polarity
seems to be the stuff of uninhibited
creation
and it seemed as though these
individuals were not self-selecting
into creative and entrepreneurial work
despite their complexity but because of
it
and this makes sense because when we
look at
elementary science one of the first
things that we’re taught
is that energy exists in the opposites
and potential energy is defined by the
amount of
stress distance discord chaos or tension
in a system
and any system that is too stable or
orderly
will lack the potential energy needed to
catalyze the creative process
this is why we understand that energy
exists between
proton and electron anode and cathode
red wire blue wire north poland south
pole
and interestingly when we look at
psychology and psychiatry we see a
similar sentiment
in the words of the late psychiatrist
carl heung
there is no energy unless there is a
tension of opposites and the greater the
tension
the greater the potential
but one thing that we also know from
science is that when a system is
too complicated too chaotic it has too
much potential
and it has no pressure release valve it
has no on off
switch it has no way of regulating the
output
it will attempt to discharge that
potential through rather
unproductive means like radiation and i
began to wonder if
perhaps the same is true for creators if
their complexity is the source of their
potential but it is
also the very thing that burns them
and i know this because i
lived it another thing happened when i
was working in venture capital
i started to wade into my own deep
dark night of the soul all of a sudden
my
greatest brightest strengths for which i
had always been
so celebrated and praised started to
self-combust and backfire
my desire to achieve warped into
exhausted hyper-competitiveness my
intuition into overwhelm my openness to
experience
into distraction and fear of commitment
my
passion into obsession confidence into
arrogance
charisma into inauthenticity and my
desire to self-actualize into a crisis
of meaning i
started to struggle with my mental
health ping-ponging back and forth
between periods of low energy and apathy
and
periods of high energy and enthusiasm
without the ability to regulate the two
i literally stopped sleeping at night
and whenever i could i no longer dreamt
with the vividness that i once had and
i also started to manifest a colorful
assortment of physical symptoms
including
perhaps most interestingly my hair
for some unknown reason on some not so
special day
my long golden hair just started to fall
and i went to doctor after doctor and
healer after healer and the best advice
i got
was you’re just a high potential young
woman who’s a little stressed
but meanwhile i felt like i had wandered
a million miles into the dark forest and
i had
no idea where i left the breadcrumbs
i was a creator interrupted
but as the zen proverb goes
when the student is ready the teacher
will appear
and my teacher the first of what would
turn out to be many appeared in the form
of an old dead white dude
and the man on the screen william james
has since become
a dear mentor of mine from beyond and
james’s work started to find me in that
funny way that
books start falling off of shelves and
synchronicities start happening when
there’s something that you’re ready to
learn
and the first teaching of james’s that
found me was his
lecture on the difference between once
born souls and twice born souls
once born souls are those among us who
preach a
sky blue optimistic gospel they view the
world
through rose tinted lenses and have a
childlike innocence about them
they don’t care much for the flaws and
imperfections in themselves and the
world around them and as a result
the world is a hospitable place for them
but quite in contrast they’re the twice
born souls
those who live on the darker side of
their misery threshold
for them the world is a double storied
mystery and as if there are multiple
selves
at war within their being they are
plagued by
conflicting and contrasting thoughts
desires
feelings and emotions and they are
acutely aware of the flaws and
imperfections in themselves and the
world around them now james believed
that
these individuals are those with most of
a destiny they are those who are most
likely
to go out into the world and to use that
complexity and that internal fidgeting
to create to create a life that is
better for themselves and for those
around them
but he also called these individuals the
sick souls because they are those who
are
most prone to afflictions of mind body
and spirit and must often traverse a
dark night of the soul
before they can truly learn to hold and
harness their multitudes
but that on the other side of this dark
night is not just a mere reversion to
health as the individual knew it before
but a true rebirth of the individual
into a wider
and deeper way of being
and so upon hearing this every fiber of
my being
lit up with an electric resonance i felt
seen i felt understood i felt
vindicated i was washed with a wave of
self
compassion and self love as i realized
that maybe i’m not bad or broken
maybe i’m just a twice born
learning to manage her multitudes maybe
i’m just
wired this way shortly after having that
personal epiphany i had a second
epiphany which was that
perhaps all of the distress and disease
i had witnessed within the
entrepreneurial and creative ecosystem
was not a result of anybody being bad or
broken and it most certainly wasn’t a
result of a crisis or a plague as the
media was wanted to tell
us but instead was a result of it being
an ecosystem that was full to the brim
with twice
born souls it occurred to me that the
individuals who are
self-selecting into creative and
entrepreneurial work
are those twice born souls those who are
not willing to accept the status quo
those who want to grow into their
potentialities that they are so acutely
aware of and so yes of course
we will have an ecosystem that is prone
to struggling but only until
these creators can learn to manage their
multitudes
and so with this awareness i
set off on a little bit of a heroine’s
journey largely in an attempt to better
understand myself but in doing so
to hopefully shine a light on the
journey of the complex creator
i started by looking at the common
personality characteristics the states
and traits that are
common among entrepreneurs and creators
and i kind of had to laugh at what i
found
because on the light side we see the
qualities that land us
on 30 under 30 lists and tedx stages
what i became aware of was a through
line
connecting the light and dark qualities
each light quality went hand in hand
with an equal
and opposite dark quality what emerged
was this quite
literal two-sided coin or double-edged
sword
that the dark and the light emerged from
the same
foundation of being i then went a step
deeper
and i started to look at the common
mental emotional
physical and spiritual challenges among
creators and
while i’m quite aware of the dark side
of many of the conditions on this screen
what i wasn’t as aware of was the
absolutely invaluable
essential light qualities that go hand
in hand with each of these diagnoses as
well
and to be clear this slide is to not
downgrade the suffering
that’s very real with many of these
diagnoses but is instead to encourage
you to take a closer look
at those parts of yourself that you’re
so quick to shame
because when we look at the individual
with depression we can choose to see
someone who’s capable of slowing down
their energy
withdrawing from the world and
channeling
their focused analytical thinking you
can call it rumination
on solving a problem of their choosing
like writing a book or solving a complex
business problem or rather essential
quality you know when we look at
addiction we can choose to see someone
who’s wired for novelty seeking and
sensation seeking and risk tolerance and
passion and love
and commitment without which tendencies
the individual creator likely wouldn’t
have the stomach
to tolerate the rocky road that is new
venture creation
and even when we look at something like
stress-related illness something that
might seem unequivocably
bad we might be surprised to learn
that researchers have found that the
individuals who are most
prone to physiological illness are those
with high iqs
the reason for this being they’re hyper
vigilant overly sensitive always
perceiving
constantly receiving nervous systems
they have nervous systems that are made
of
gossamer made of lace they’re connecting
every dot
and picking up on every trend and seeing
the patterns that are invisible to
others and so yes
of course our nervous systems will be
run raw from time to time from that
state
of hyper awareness but if we could
choose to change these things about
ourselves i can’t help but think that we
wouldn’t
and this brings to mind a quote by
friedrich nietzsche
careful lest in casting out your demons
you exercise
the best thing in you and so
this brings the question how
do we manage our multitudes how do we
harness our potential without being
burned by it
and the answer may either inspire you or
frustrate you carl heung would call
it integration william james and the
alchemists
would call it unification but
no matter what you call it the meaning
is the same which is that we must embark
upon a process of merging the multitudes
of
unifying the opposites of coming to see
the light and the dark as part of the
same
wholeness of self
the alchemists had a very clever way of
looking at the
power and the potential that was found
in opposites
and they believed that by fusing two
opposites in the elemental world by
fusing sulfur and mercury you could make
gold
similarly they believed that by fusing
opposites
in the human experience by fusing the
light in the dark
you could achieve psychological
perfection they called this
magnum opus or the great work
now unfortunately there is no
three-step cure or 30-day workshop or
20-minute tedx talk that can teach you
how to integrate the self
but for the sake of leaving you with
something i’d like to share
three stages that i’ve seen across
traditions that i’ve studied
the first tradition usually involves
something along the lines of
self-understanding
being willing to come face to face with
our darkness
toe to toe with our demons becoming a
student
of the self with the intention of deep
and
honest understanding the alchemist would
call this the blackening stage literally
reducing the self to ashes
the second stage is typically something
along the lines of self-acceptance
because inevitably what happens when we
embark upon the journey of
self-understanding is
we uncover aspects of ourselves that are
inconvenient to the extreme
and so with this we must meet ourselves
with incredible
self-compassion and self-acceptance so
that we may begin
to welcome the light and the dark into
the same wholeness
of self the alchemist would call this
the whitening stage
finally we may begin a process of
self-transformation
we may use this new learning this
transformed
aspect of self to write that book or to
create
that company or to launch that movement
the alchemist would call this the
reddening stage it’s literally the
creation of the philosopher’s stone
to end on a humble note
when i first started coming to these
awarenesses about light and dark and
energy and integration i
i swear i thought it was coming up with
something brand new um
i thought i had discovered something and
then i began researching it and i
realized how deluded i am
because these concepts exist
across time and culture they are ancient
and they are steeped in archetypal
wisdom and different cultures have
different names for a weather you call
it light and dark or yin and yang
masculine feminine sun and moon heaven
hell anima animus right brain left brain
head and heart
it all means the same thing which is
that in
all of us there exists multitudes and
the purpose
of being a creator is not to cut
ourselves off
from any of it but to learn to create
with our
whole selves
if i leave you with only one feeling
i hope it would be comfort comfort in
knowing
you’re not bad or broken comfort in
knowing that
even if along the journey of
self-discovery you lose your
metaphorical hair
you’ll recover and it’ll grow back
comfort in knowing you have
everything you need inside of you and
comfort in knowing you’re just
wired this way thank you
[Music]