Every day, we create our own reality. You might look askance at me when I say that, or ask, “What new age mumbo jumbo is Renee spouting now?” But I mean it.
Yes, we all make big, life-altering decisions like marriage, jobs, whether or not or when to have children, but we also make minute-to-minute, second-by-second decisions that decide what our life looks and feels like day to day in ways we might not appreciate. That volunteer work, hobby, or Pilates class that has become part of your routine? At some point, you made a decision for it to be so. You created that reality. Are you happy about that decision today? That’s up to you.
In effect, you are a creator. The creator of your own experience, and to some extent, the experience of those around you. Do you remember sense, decide, act? Well, we’re not just doing that to catch a ball or navigate a curb. We’re doing that about everything!
In The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin says:
Everyone is a creator. Those who do not engage in the traditional arts might be wary of calling themselves artists. They might perceive creativity as something extraordinary or beyond their capabilities. A call for the special few who are born with these gifts.
Fortunately, this is not the case…
Creativity doesn’t exclusively relate to making art. We all engage in this act on a daily basis.
To create is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. It could be a conversation, the solution to a problem, a note to a friend, the rearrangement of furniture in a room, a new route home to avoid a traffic jam.
What you make doesn’t have to be witnessed, recorded, sold, or encased in glass for it to be a work of art…
In each moment, we are immersed in a field of undifferentiated matter from which our senses gather bits of information. The outside universe we perceive doesn’t exist as such. Through a series of electrical and chemical reactions, we generate a reality internally. We create forests and oceans, warmth and cold. We read words, hear voices, and form interpretations. Then in an instant, we produce a response. All of this in a world of our own creation.
Regardless of whether or not we’re formally making art, we are all living as artists. We perceive, filter, and collect data, then curate an experience for ourselves and others based on this information set. Whether we do this consciously or unconsciously, by the mere fact of being alive, we are active participants in the ongoing process of creation.
He’s literally describing sense, decide, act, but with a whole new perspective.
In another book I recently read (and shared in our newsletter), Harvard professor of psychology, Ellen Langer, writes: don’t try to make the right decision, make the decision right. “I’m equally in favor of making decisions by factoring in the information available at the time or by ignoring it. But then, once we choose an option, I suggest that we make it work rather than worrying about whether the decision was right. We can play any choice as the right decision by looking at any advantages that accrue.” After all, Langer says, unless you give up, there is no such thing as failure, just incomplete success.
“I don’t think that more information, more time, and more calculations are better. Rather than all this information improving our decisions, it can result in dissatisfaction and almost crippling anxiety. After all, working memory is not unlimited, and new information can be distracting.” Analysis paralysis is real.
You can make all the pro/con lists you want and do all the research available in our vast information networks, but sometimes you just have to make the decision. There is no “right” answer. And Langer contends that even if a choice makes more “sense,” it still doesn’t mean it’s the “right” one. It’s not about what we decide; it’s about what we do after the decision is made. When we make a decision, it’s our job to use our creativity and curiosity to figure out how to make it the “right” one.
And if you’re rolling your eyes at this, that’s ok. My husband thinks this is cuckoo bananas. Not that long ago, I would have said the same…I’ve lived my whole life making pro-con lists, weighing decisions like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. When I read this, I thought, “Maybe I don’t have to live in fear of getting something wrong.” It was a freeing thought.
It’s also terrifying for this type-A planner. It also takes no small amount of courage to live that way. To live boldly and creatively, we need compassion toward ourselves for trying something scary and really just doing the best we can. It also takes slowing down and being deliberate. I often need to remind myself to take a breath, not be reactive, and instead consider what it would take to “make this right” for me. Because our decisions, and our living into them, add up over time to create our life.
Let me close these existential musings with a quote from yet another recent read: When You Wonder, You’re Learning: Mister Rogers’ Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids by Gregg Behr & Ryan Rydzewski, Ch 2:
The implication is that human beings are born creative. Though genes and heredity have been found to play a part, nearly all of us are gifted with at least some ability to imagine new solutions to problems. Whether we’re generating lists of novel ideas (an ability called divergent thinking) or drawing from diverse, interdisciplinary fields (convergent thinking). “Every child is born with a unique endowment, which gives them an opportunity to make something entirely different from everybody else in the world,” Rogers once said.
It’s in you. It’s in all of us. May you find, cherish, and use your gifts.
