For most of our lives, we are asked to compromise our dreams, our values, our hopes for the future, and to learn to live with what we don’t actually want. This is called “reasonable.” The assumption that is just below the surface of this advice is that you can’t have what you want, so learn to live with it. Don’t want things, and you’ll be happier and more well-adjusted. Why bang your head against the wall? Grow up and compromise and all will be okay.
So, after decades of taking this advice, is it any wonder that both men and woman go through a mid-life crisis? They know that there is more to life than they have lived. They may feel burdened and trapped. And so, they go a little crazy. This reaction comes right out of the compromises they have made. But their life-spirit didn’t compromise. It didn’t make any bargains about avoiding frustration by settling for less than they wanted. And so, as the discrepancy between the desire of their life spirit to express itself and the be “reasonable” regime gets wider and wider, there comes a breaking point. Not a bad thing, really. But usually not very productive, either. Too often, the person in question does not know how to create the life he or she might want, so they simply fall back into a similar life-style at the end of the crisis. This is the nature of the structure they are in.
The Role of Failure in the Creative Process
Let’s talk about the fallacy of “reasonableness.” What may seem reasonable may be simply a preemptive strike against failure. As if failure is a bad thing. I was talking to one of the great nature photographers about his art, and he said, “People need to take a lot of pictures. Most of them will be bad at first, but that’s how you learn to be good.” Interesting difference between the educational system we all grew up with, in which, if you tried something and it didn’t work, you got a bad grade. But if you did something well, but learned nothing new, you got a good grade. School often unwittingly sends the message “don’t fail.” The deeper implication is that failure is a very bad thing and should be avoided at all costs. How different it is in the arts. In Twyla Tharp’s book, The Creative Habit, she writes a chapter entitled “An A in Failure.”
“It’s not that failure is a good thing in and of itself. We hate to fail. And why not. It is that learning is a good thing, and you can’t learn unless you have a degree of experience.”
So here is a reasonable question: Is it reasonable to give up before you have had a chance to see what you truly want, and before any learning has taken place about how to move from here to there? I would say that is unreasonable and not terribly practical either. And the self-censoring before that fact, the squelching of self-honesty about what you might really want, the closing of doors before you have thought it through compromises one of your most important human instincts, the desire to create something that matters to you.
Creating the Life that You Want
The way we approach this question within the Creating Your Life course is by separating out what you want from what you think is possible. This is critical. We begin with an open question without the restraint of process. Look, the worst thing that’ll happen from this is you find you want something you may not be able to create. And, more often, what you learn is that you can have more and more of what you want to create by a solid strategy in which the actions that you take build a foundation for the next. Over time and learning and experience, you are in a different position than you once were. One in which you are more able to create what you want to.
Someone wrote to me:
“Dear Robert, In your earlier books that I have just discovered (and greatly admire) you advocate dreaming big, not settling for a compromise, not confusing what we want with what we COULD have had… but in a video…, you recommend setting “workable” goals instead! How do you define workable? and overall, I am confused :)”
And I wrote back the following:
“No need for confusion. You don’t play Mozart on your first piano lesson. To be honest about your aspirations and values, you cannot compromise. To learn how to achieve them, begin with workable steps that enable you to build capacity to create more and more of what you want. Just like in music, so in life!
What is reasonable is to learn how to create what you truly want without compromise. What is not reasonable is to surrender to lower expectations without ever having a chance to explore the fullness of your life-spirit, your creative nature, and your true aspirations and values.”
© Robert Fritz 2011 | Revised and used with permission by Creatortools Inc.
About the Author:
Robert Fritz is a composer, filmmaker, organizational consultant, and author of numerous books including the international bestseller The Path of Least Resistance, Your Life as Art, The Managerial Moment of Truth, and Identity.
Photo credits: Ivan Fritz | Layout: Jen Thornton