There’s no creativity without the possibility of failure. And the more creative you want to be, the greater the risk of failure that you need to embrace.
Creativity is, by definition, involved with bringing new things into the world.
That requires uncertainty. The new thing can’t exist yet — otherwise it wouldn’t be new.
Everything uncertain is risky. You don’t know how long it will take… Or whether the end result will be any good…
So the more you try and reduce the risk, the more you limit your creativity.
Stick to a method where you have a reasonable idea of the time required. You limit yourself.
Use a “proven” template. You limit yourself.
Heading off the beaten track and into the unknown jungle is risky, painful, and slow. You’ve got to hack your way through for every step… Unable to see even a meter in front of your face.
Contrast that with the ease and certainty of simply sauntering carefree down an existing, well-marked path.
You can absolutely take the existing route if you’re happy to follow rather than lead. You might still be producing great work. But it’s not truly creative. You’re a craftsman rather than an artist.
There’s nothing wrong with that if it’s what you really want. But is it what you want?
The slow and risky route is the only option that provides the possibility of creating something genuinely new.
This doesn’t mean you should create without restrictions. Restrictions have been shown to boost creativity.
But make those restrictions new. Choose ones that have never been tried before.
In every case, failure must be an option. If you know in advance that you will succeed then it can’t be creative — the element of novelty is missing by definition.
It follows that the bigger the creative leap you want to make, the more risk you need to take.
Trying to remove risk from the creative process is like trying to invent a perpetual motion machine. It’s such a seductive idea that we desperately want to believe it’s possible. But, at the end of the day, it breaks the laws of nature.
Think of the desire for risk-free creativity as like swimming with armbands.
They keep you safe and make you feel comfortable. But you’ll never swim fast or freely unless you willingly put them aside.
And any confidence boost they give you is fragile and shallow. It’s confidence in your support aids rather than inherent, unshakeable belief in yourself.
At some point there’s no other option than to throw those armbands away. Then let go of the edge of the pool…
This needn’t be as dangerous or as scary as it sounds.
Your creative failures come with minimal downside — but successes have unlimited upside.
You simply need to find that attitude where you genuinely welcome the possibility of failure. That’s what allows the successes to come.
Avoiding risk might feel like the easy option. But — as in so many things — it’s really the hard option.
When you risk nothing, then it’s almost impossible to stand out from the crowd. No matter how well you execute. Even if you’re perfect.
But when you embrace risk… Sure, success will be harder to come by. But whatever you do achieve will stand out automatically.
Seneca summed it up perfectly a couple of millennia ago:
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.”