As a true creative, you are a brave warrior – woman or man. Your courage, just like your creativity, is not an option. It’s an essential part of who you are. You feel creativity throughout your whole being, experiencing it as a source of energy that has to be expressed. This eternal wish to create becomes the life energy behind your courage. You show up and act courageously to manifest the art that is important to you, and art takes courage!
Creativity and courage are intimately connected in a synergic relationship: creativity feeds your courage, and your courage brings your creativity to life. Courage takes your dreams from wishes and fantasies and transforms them into reality. Courage makes your art a reality.
Yes, creativity takes courage. As the French artist Henri Matisse quote says, “Another word for creativity is courage.” It takes courage to express your creativity and what you are passionate about and to transcend the limits of your comfort zone or the limits of your irrational fears. It takes courage to put your creativity out into the world – to open yourself up to be valued, loved, and appreciated and, at the same time, to be criticized, rejected, and devalued potentially. Yes, it takes courage to push yourself through fears, insecurities, anxieties, and life challenges. And it takes courage to stay true to what you are to create what you believe in.
Are You Connecting to Your Courage?
Now, I invite you to take a moment to reflect. What comes to your mind about your courage? Do you feel it? Do you wonder if you have courage and creative bravery? Does it help you be the creative that you want to be? Do you wonder what you could be if you had more courage?
Sometimes courage can be obscured by fears, self-doubts, and anxieties of painful early experiences of you daring to show up – which you may or may not be aware of. Perhaps no one encouraged you as a child to take on challenges so you could find your courage. Or perhaps fear was instilled in you right when you dared to take on a challenge. Or, it could be that you just took on your parents’ struggles around courage. As kids, we can take on the good and the bad parts of the adults we love and need the most without our awareness or consent.
Normal fears that took you to a painful emotional place as a child can hold you hostage as an adult. These unhealed experiences of the past can turn your normal and everyday fears into unhealthy fears that control you. Fear of failing, fear of rejection, fear of being shamed… they are all normal fears that can interfere with your creativity when they are turned from normal into paralyzing fears, freezing instead of energizing and being able to express your creativity.
You can find comfort in your fears, connect with your courage, and reclaim your creativity.
Courage is not something you have or don’t have. Courage is an energy that you can connect with when you find comfort in your fears, insecurities, or anxieties. When you tap into your fears and allow them to fuel you rather than paralyze you, you are finding and using your courage. When you realize you can use your fears in the service of connecting to your courage, you reclaim your creativity.
You just need to trust that you can bear your fears while you move through your fears when you need to. The good news is that trust comes through doing. Every time you push through your challenges, they become opportunities for growth, healing, and accomplishments.
If you feel you can’t connect to your courage and your fears are too much for you to bear on your own, there is help. Psychotherapy is very effective, not only in healing paralyzing fears but also inspiring and supporting you in your journey of taking on and overcoming the right challenges – challenges that are aligned with who you are.
You really do have the courage you need within you to express your creativity. The courage to assert your human right to live and bloom fully through expressing your creativity. The courage of telling the story of who you are with your whole heart and choosing to manifest life over fears.
If you are interested in psychotherapy, please contact me for your 15-20min free phone consultation.
I am Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Doctor in Clinical Psychology. I help creatives and performers with emotional trauma, depression, anxiety, performance anxiety, creative blocks, relationships, and addictions – to be and live their own best version. You can read more about Therapy for Creatives and Performers here.
