Less Strategy, More Humanity
Create from the inside out and resist the urge to create from the outside in
Let’s talk strategy.
There’s strategy to foster click throughs, strategy to elicit likes, strategy to build engagement, strategy to boost sharing, strategy to drive performance.
Strategy is exhausting.
Humans weren’t built to act like machines, focussed on ever-advancing statistics to validate our collective being, yet many of us spend our days focussed on developing strategies to build our self worth this way.
I understand the appeal. Digital metrics of success are so much easier to understand and quantifiable versus more meaningful messy measures. They satisfy our ‘fast thinking’ with immediate gratification and straight-forward answers. 20 likes? Great! 200 likes? Even better! There’s a linear correlation that makes our dopamine skyrocket alongside the likes.
Marketing Loses Its Appeal
I’ve spent the last 19 years of my life learning about, creating and working alongside the space of digital marketing. But the more strategies and metrics I learn about, the more I’m trying to separate myself from it.
I say this not to speak ill of the marketers doing their jobs, but rather to acknowledge a tilt of my internal scales, from the need for external validation that feeds my ego to an internal knowing that feeds my soul.
It’s not to say that I won’t post anything ever again that’s self-promoting (heck, I posted two things just last week), but it’s the constant drive to create things for an audience that feels performative. It’s got me feeling the icks.
Nor is it to say that I’m immune to quick and easy metrics. I still feel the pull towards the (illusion of) validation they bring.
But when I eased trying to prove my worth to others, a shift — a quieting — happened inside of me.
This quiet contemplation, a rising desire for humility, a sense of enoughness, fostering community… these all feel way more important to me than marketing ever has or ever will.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking with Meg Lewis and I love their take on understanding who you are at your core. They shared that this can help drive so many life decisions and it proves to be so much more fulfilling than trying to follow trends, both in fashion and in life. Meg shared that it’s taken a long time for them to come to this place of inner knowing about their style, their work and their why.
The more I deepen into my learning and practice of creative confidence, I unequivocally believe that it comes not from external statistics, but from a deep, internal knowing.
Knowing who we are.
Knowing what we like.
Knowing that we are worth it, in all the ways we show up in this world.
Knowing that we mean a lot to a little group of people, rather than meeting a little to a lot of people.
It’s knowing oneself so deeply that the outside metrics can exist, but don’t speak more loudly than your inner voice.
Turning Metrics Inside Out
How do we take the external metrics many of us have become accustomed to and turn them inward, having them work for our creativity instead of against it?
Click through past projects you’ve created and assemble between 3-5 projects that you can review.
Choose one to start and point out all the things you like about your own work. Take one piece and list all the things you like about it. Every single thing, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem. Move onto the next piece and do it again and again until you’ve exhausted all possible ideas. Be generous and kind to yourself.
Engage with yourself and with your creative process, committing to blocking out time each day, week or month to give your creativity breathing room. Turn off all devices and remove distractions during these blocks of creative time.
Share your past self with your present self by looking back at old journals you’ve written in. One of my favourite collaborators these days is my past self on the pages of my notebooks.
Perform check-ins with your friends and creative confidants to learn what they’re up to and how you can support one another.
A final note: It’s wonderful when what we are paid to do intersects with what we feel we are meant to do. If this doesn’t describe your situation, there’s lots of magic to be found in a creative side hustle; not for money, but for expression, experimentation and expansiveness that comes from creative making. Start small, build slowly, wander aimlessly and find joy in the journey. Do so with the mindset to create from the inside out and resisting the urge to create from the outside in so that we may feel the deep satisfaction that only we can gift ourselves.
