The Secret To Mastery: It’s Simpler Than You Think

The Secret To The Creative Process

I've been in the creative process forever. In my earliest memories I was making stuff.

Lego aeroplanes and spaceships…

A cranóg made from mud and sticks…

Sketching wild birds from the encyclopedia…

Nothing unusual there. Most of us do this kind of thing from an early age, that is until we're assimilated fully into the machine.

I loved art classes in school. We used to have double art on Fridays and out of all my classes this was the one I enjoyed most.

I remember one time I built this huge spaceship from Lego, all my own design – I must have been 10 or 11 at the time.

I presented my masterpiece to my aunt. “Wow”, she said. “That's amazing Laurence”

I was proud as punch of myself, and that spaceship…

Until I saw it move in slow motion towards the floor and smash into a thousand pieces.

The Creative Process In Business

The creative process followed me into work, and later in business. It was everywhere, it is everywhere.

I don't think we can avoid it to be honest, no one can. It's in everything thing we do in one form or another and everyone gives it expression.

There's no getting away from it, and we are either in harmony with it or we are not.

In many cases it could be argued that business is sterile, devoid of artistic expression. But this couldn't be further from the truth.

When I was running my business back in the day, I was always conscious of making things that people could admire and enjoy. Art was in everything I did.

Lighting systems, audio visual, home cinema & automation and so on. I loved the buzz of designing the systems and building it for people.

Watching them go Wow! when it was all done was something that gave me great enjoyment.

When a customer didn't appreciate what I made or worse again, didn't pay me, I was really disappointed. I gave my best to create something and I just couldn't understand it.

It's the part of business I really couldn't tolerate.

The Nature Of Things

I suppose that was, and is, the nature of the game I was in. But it doesn't have to be that way.

The problem I found is that most of us put money and making a living first. Then creative expression second, or third or even not at all.

It's not productive, sure why bother? Nobody's gonna pay you to do it, you'll never make any money from it so what's the point.

For those of us who escape from the rat wheel employment trap, the soul sucking 9 to 5, to break out on our own adventure there is short term gratification.

I say short term but this could be a couple years.

If we fail to stay connected to the reason we started in the first place it won't be long before the struggle to make a living catches up on us and drags us down.

Now, I don't suggest that it's the same for everyone, it's not. But for many of us being in business for ourselves is a damn struggle.

So getting away from the momentum of working for money never seems to leave us.

We Are Storymakers

We're all chasing shadows. We've forgotten who we are.

We are makers of things, creators, artists, Storymakers.

We are here on this earth to make and tell stories through our art and staying in touch with that is perhaps the most important thing of all.

Coming here to please others first, to work for money, to make a living, was not in the plan lads. Yes this is how society has been built but we don't have to follow those rules.

The creative process is automatic, it's there waiting, willing and able to give us everything if we can only let it do its thing.

The problem is we get in its way.

There's a particular flow to things in the world, the seasons, the sea, the sky, night and day and so on. The move and pulse and come and go all by themselves.

It is our job, the job of the Storymaker then to move with this flow, to harness it and to make higher versions of ourselves from it.

Zirán

The creative process creates itself, we do not create it, we ride it.

In Zen it is known as Zirán; That which comes of itself. The creative process is spontaneous, is free of conditions and requires no force or effort.

Life requires no force, no laws, no boss, nobody to push it around and make it happen. It simply does it.

The idea that there are laws that govern is a nonsense. It comes from the ancient ideology that people needed to be led, to be ruled by someone preordained.

It's crazy stuff, and it has infiltrated our entire way of thinking of ourselves and the broader Universe.

In describing the creative process is more accurate to say there is no process, it simply is. To apply a process suggests that there are rules, and there are no rules. What is being created is created now.

Looking back, analysing, kills creativity, destroys the very thing we are trying to create. The very act of trying kills it.

The process looks after itself and requires no input from you or I.

We are simply tools in the hands of our art.

To realise that and remove ourselves from it allows it to be created.

Yes, all very esoteric, arty fucking farty, but true nonetheless. If you can see it.