She was right at the very start of her creative business venture. The start in that she has begun taking her natural talents and gifts seriously and started to use them as the basis something that she will get paid for. She has ‘turned pro’ basically (another Steven Pressfield reference).
She called with questions and lots of them. She wanted answers and certainty. She wanted to know that she was doing it right. Could I tell her how to do it right? Actually, could I tell her what the right way to do it was, so she could break the rules and do it her way. I do love this rebellious streak so many creatives have. Load of great innovations, creations and business ideas come from a response to the status quo. But what I love even more is when someone has the courage to dive inside of their own blank canvas. When they stop looking around at what has been before, or what someone over there is doing and instead get curious and playful with their own ideas. The most authentic creations come from here.
Of course, I could have told her the way I’d do it or the way I thought she could do it. I could have pointed her in the direction of books, courses, videos etc. I even could have explored her ideas with her in theory. That would have been fun for me but her business isn’t about me and she is not at the fine tuning stage yet. She’s right at the very beginning and it’s here in this infancy stage where ideas contain so much potential and opportunity. She and her ideas need expansion and doing, not prescription, fine tuning and theory.
So what did I advise? I assured her she was already doing so well (which is true). People doing new and courageous things need all the energy and encouragement they can get. I told her there was no set way, there was no rule book she could find to help her find her own way. But I did prescribe her one thing - ‘permission to play’.
The biggest mistake we make when we ‘turn pro’ is that we forget to bring the spirit of play along with us.
We think playing is for amateurs. No more messing around. We have to be legit from the get go, right? We do this in our lives too. I’m an adult now so away with these silly ideas and games. To the charity shop with our colourful clothes. Into the attic our trinkets go. But in all seriousness, somewhere in the process of packing up our childhood we also throw away our ability to play - our innate power tool for creating gets thrown out and boxed up.
Play is absolutely fundamental to the creative process.
As I often say - play paves the way. When we play we are free to experiment and try things without judgement. Play is how we make discoveries (aka mistakes). We’re more daring, risk taking and expansive when we play. Think about it, little kids are constantly being told to “be careful” when they play. Imagine if we sat down at our desk (or whatever shape your place of work takes) and it came with a danger warning to ‘BE CAREFUL’.
In work, people often don’t afford themselves play.
They become obsessed with the whole ‘time is money’ thing and think they cannot spend any money unless there’s an immediate or tangible return on invest. They hold their passion projects - the ideas or stuff they really want to create - in the wings. I’ll do that when I’ve learnt it, when I’ve done the hard work and brought the money in. We do this in our lives too. We have an idea or dream but then become paralysed by how little time we have to waste, what others will think, what could go wrong…etc (you know the score).
When it comes to work, having spent the first decade of my career working in theatre, I am fortunately very comfortable with turning work into play and play into work. I continue to flex this muscle in the running of my own business.
In theatre, we have what’s called R&D - Research & Development. I use the present tense here because once you work in theatre, you join a family that you forever remain a part of and everything is ‘we’ because everything is created together. R&D is essentially where we spend time and money testing and experimenting with our ideas. Often this would look like a week where we’d bring in a team - actors, designers, writers, stage managers (all at a fee of course) purely so we could give the idea the best possible opportunity to develop whilst it was in its infancy.
The majority of the material created would never translate into a full scale production. We play to pave the way, to move the ideas forward. Eventually some of them would go into rehearsals and finally onto the stage to a paying audience to see. Work that would never have been discovered or created without that week of play. Play unlocks the development of the ideas and of the people generating them. This is invaluable to the work.
Doing anything new is scary enough in itself. Let’s not make it worse by crippling ourself with 5 star judgement from the start.
Imagine if every day of R&D (and rehearsals) the company were critiqued based on final night performance standards? You never get the show the the road! It would be so demotivating and damn right nasty. Everyone would be crippled with fear and no one would feel courageous enough to try new ideas out. No one truly plays when they are being judged. You get the best out of people when you give them permission to play.
You get the best out of your ideas when you give yourself permission to play with them, to make mistakes- and in turn discoveries- and maybe you’ll even have some fun in the process.
Artists use sketchbooks, musicians jam, theatre makers R&D. How will you play with your ideas?