45: Cynthia Morris on the Challenges of a Creative Life, Letting Your Creative Self Lead, and Creating Your Own Stories

Cynthia Morris is an author, illustrator, and the creator Original Impulse. She has turned many of her ideas to reality from completing a novel to running creativity workshops in Paris. In this episode, Cynthia talks about the struggles of a creative life, listening to your inner artist, and the need to create our own stories.

Here are three things you can learn from Cynthia:

Even though Cynthia has achieved many things in her creative career, that doesn’t mean it’s been easy. Just because she enjoys creating doesn’t mean the creative life is easy.

She believes putting things out into the world “involves an enormous perceived risk.” It has a very specific effect on our nervous systems and our psyches, and the only way to withstand that is to have a “commitment to your ultimate end goal.”

There are so many important factors that go into your creative work. There are the time and money commitments. There’s the possibility that your work may amount to nothing. Everything is a crap shoot. “You have no idea. It’s crazy. It’s ludicrous to make things.”

The mistake many creatives make is trying to do it all on their own. Many of us have fallen into the myth of the lone creative genius. If you want a successful creative career you need allies, peers, and mentors to help you. Creating should not be a solo adventure.

Often times, we are so concerned about what need to accomplish and how we need to accomplish it, that we don’t pay attention to what our creative self is telling us. Cynthia thinks we all need to stop worrying about everything and just “let your artist lead.”

There are times we got so caught up in the daily grind that we don’t listen to that inner voice. Sometimes we just need to let her be in charge. We need to get lost. We need to make bad decsions. We need to indulge in the part of us that is “oriented toward play and creativity and isn’t always practical in doing the right thing.”

It is those times that we let go that we can be our most creative self. We need that time to explore the world. “There’s so much value in free space.” That is why Cynthia tries to teach people to make space in their schedule. Stop packing every day with a ton of stuff. “If you don’t have space, you don’t have any way to create or be creative.”

We live in such a great time. There’s so much information available to us. There are enough resources and advice to keep us busy forever. And that’s why it’s also a problem.

We are consuming too much. We are listening to too many voices. Cynthia believes the biggest challenge a creative person faces is battling all that noise.

We become too occupied with what others are doing and accomplishing that we forget to listen to ourselves. We need to “learn how to develop a direct channel” to our own original impulse.

We need to learn to listen to our own voice. We need to figure out what we want to say and what we want to make. We need to temper other people’s stories with our own story and our own drive. We need to “develop a relationship with that deep inner voice” within ourselves.

Start living your own story instead of trying to mimic or live someone else’s.

Read more shownotes from episode 45 with Cynthia Morris