The Secret To Creativity? Living Life Without Filters
“What’s my worst flaw?” I asked, completely out of nowhere. Stunned, my partner looked my way, but no word would come out of his mouth. I could tell he was terrified of saying the wrong thing, so I let it go.
Later that week though, he replied: “I am not sure it’s a flaw, but it certainly makes things more difficult.” He paused. “The inability to accept the lies in life that are designed to ‘protect us’”.
He had a point. Actually, I don’t see why I should, and even if I did, my brain doesn’t work that way. I rephrased: “Confrontational then”. I can live with that. In fact, I believe we all should, to a degree.
The worn out trail to conformity
Look around you. From a very early age, we are taught to avoid divergence. Schools, media, religion and politics teach us dishonesty is the way to conformity, which in turn allows us to live together in peace. No waves, no arguments.
A perfect example of that would be T-Mobile in the United States. Until the National Labor Relations Board ruled against it, the telecom company required employees “to maintain a positive work environment in a manner that is conducive to effective working relationships.”
Being required to be positive created quite the opposite; miserable employees suppressing their thoughts and feelings. That defensiveness is what Columbia University psychologist Tory Higgins calls ‘prevention’; focusing our energy towards avoiding possible conflicts rather than pursuing the achievement of a goal.
But as Helen Keller stated: “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.” On a daily basis, this vigilance can be extremely draining, leading to signs of mental distress such as depression, burnout, anxiety and stress disorders.
The power of toxic shame
“Boys don’t cry”. “Why don’t you get yourself a real job?” “No need to make a scene”. These comments can easily be mistaken for pieces of advice given with good intentions. After all, people are “here to help”. Between the lines, however, it means being yourself could be condemned by society.
This is where shame as a healthy human emotion can easily turn into a state of being, toxic and dehumanizing. This is where authenticity ceases to exist. In his book Healing the Shame That Binds You, John Bradshaw wrote “Toxic shame is the greatest form of learned domestic violence there is”, and he had a point.
In the end, I believe what my partner perceived as a ‘problem’ was that lack of censorship, in a world where fear and shame have become the most efficient tools to control the masses.
Healthy shame, on the other hand, makes us human, humble. It gives us boundaries. It means I don’t mind making mistakes or asking questions, because that’s how I learn, and if there is something I know, it is that I don’t know much. It also means I have no filter, because I don’t mind being wrong.
So why is it “making things more difficult”? If I asked my artist friends, they’d say systems in place see disruption as threatening, which is why they are often labelled as troublemakers. In other words, saying out loud what people usually suppress can come out as unexpected and unsettling.
The perks of being different
During my days as EVP of a marketing agency, we would only hire people who showed they could doubt; both their own perceptions and everything around them. More often than not, these people were outsiders; they didn’t behave, look or think like most. In short: they were ‘weird’. They were also on a quest to understand their surroundings, which requires a level of empathy that is essential to good design.
That weirdness was also what made these individuals highly creative, because they had been through a number of unusual experiences, breaking their cognitive patterns at the same time.
And we were not the only ones recognizing the link between unconventional personalities and creative thinking; the business world is slowly but surely catching up, thanks to companies such as ImFusio specializing in management innovation to drive corporate transformation.
Nathalie Nowak, co-founder at ImFusio, recalls: “Initially, we relied on the work of professor Nancy Adler, who showed that an organization that recognizes and celebrates its diversity (multidisciplinary teams, people with different experiences and different family history) becomes more powerful than a mono-cultural team (where people all did the same studies, for example)”.
The path to a #Nofilter self
Called ‘cognitive disinhibition’, the incapacity of filtering and ignoring irrelevant information could explain why creativity and eccentricity often go hand in hand.
Where mental filters usually hide behind a curtain most of the processing going on in our brains, in some highly creative people, the reduction of filters could allow more material to reach conscious awareness to be recombined in new and original ways, resulting in creative ideas.
However, the same lack of filters can also lead to schizophrenia, offbeat thoughts and hallucinations. Some famous artists as well as the Valley’s best and brightest have experimented with substances such as LSD to boost their creativity… with more or less success in dealing with the side effects.
So how come certain people can deal with unfiltered stimuli without losing focus and others end up battling ADD? According to Scientific American, other factors come into play, such as high IQ and high working memory capacity.
In the end, saying we should all feel free to express ourselves and be creative sounds great, but how do we get there (without dropping acid)?
1. Don’t be judgmental. The road to self awareness contains a few obstacles along the way, our internal speech being one of them.
2. Embrace failure. Mistakes are our best teachers, don’t be hard on yourself when you make some; that’s how we all learn.
3. Agree to disagree. Being ourselves and expressing how we feel is crucial for our mental health. Find places, times and ways to drop your guard and show your real self.
4. Apply empathy. How we deal with new information or experiences depends largely on our capacity of seeing things from other people’s perspective. Whenever you are stuck with a problem you can’t solve, turn it on its head and try walking in other people’s shoes.
5. Dare to diversify your experiences. Not only is trying something new good for dealing with our ego, it’s also very helpful to trick your brain into thinking more flexibly and creatively.
Audrey Raby is a strategist, a storyteller a speaker and a mom. She’s also COO of innovation consulting firm Nash, in Montreal.
