Do It Pisses You Off When I Make Mistakes?
Because it pisses Tom off.
Tom is a writer and he thinks I am an idiot. He saw a visual on my site that said “invest on your creativity” instead of “invest in” so he emailed me:
Tom used a shaming technique to make his point. His point being: I have mastered the English language and I am determined to humiliate all the idiots who don’t get it right.
Did Tom’s strategy to make me feel like shit work? Nope.
I thanked him for pointing out my mistake, I learned and changed the visual:
and then I told him he should not join our creative workshop.
Don’t get me wrong: I take no pleasure in making mistakes. Like everybody else, when I do something, I give it my best. And when I realize I made mistakes, I feel frustrated and bad. For a short while.
Because I take great pleasure in learning and growing. And the thing is: you can’t learn anything if you don’t accept that you need to learn something.
The reason why I told Tom he shouldn’t join 10.28 Detox™ is not because he shamed me instead of being kind. It’s because Tom doesn’t want to learn, he wants to get it right. And then tell everybody else who doesn’t that they are fucking idiots, unlike him.
The trouble is: creativity is not an ego contest. Creativity is about making tons of mistakes. It’s about fooling around, feeling it’s going nowhere and staying humble while the learning curve follows its mysterious path.
In 10.28 Detox™, we send people a practical exercise daily with a limited amount of time (10 minutes) to complete it. We create constraints that force them to stop “before it’s ready”, and then we ask them to share what they’ve done with the community.
Ego has no space in our workshop. We have participants from different countries for whom English is not their first language. (Just like us by the way, we are French.) It takes a high amount of courage to enroll in a creative workshop in a language that is not your own. We celebrate courage and risk taking, not ego-driven results.
I know, I know, we live in a world that is all about results. Money results: make $1,000 per month on the side now! Power results: Outsource your work to India while you spend your days on a Beach sipping Mojitos! Sorry, this is not the game we play.
We offer you to become you. Find out what you have to say, and how you want to say it. We offer you to reconnect with your creativity.
Because we believe the world is a better place when people are fully expressed not when they are shut down by people who want you to get it right before you say anything.
Diversity and differences are not a threat, they are our strength. Let’s cultivate them.
So, if somebody tries to shame you because you made a mistake, remember that creativity embraces mistakes. It’s out of them that come the most unexpected growth.
Every Monday, we embark on a journey that won’t be perfect. A journey into the creative unknown. Join us.
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Nathalie Sejean is Activate® Creativity co-founder, a company dedicated to help you reconnect, stretch and nurture your creativity. Click here for more.
