DON'T JUSTIFY, JUST DO! BY AVA HERMANN

We talk a lot about how our creativity is unlearned. We used to ask more questions, used to laugh more, used to do things without asking for permission more. But what other things have we stopped doing? 

For me, one of the biggest ones was making decisions without justifying them to others. I realized that I’d reached a point where I felt the need to explain the “why” behind so much of what I did to the people around me, even when the decisions didn’t involve those people in the slightest. It’s easy for us as students to constantly try to check how we’re doing, but the fact is that a lot of our best work is done when we don’t let anyone else’s input influence us. Try to think back to something you used to love to do and then think about why you don’t do it as much anymore, and I bet it’ll be at least partly because of the negative reactions that you got from those with whom you shared your passion and enthusiasm. Even if it was one of your favorite hobbies, pastimes, ways to grow as a person, parts of life, you don’t do it as much now just because others who didn’t care about it wouldn’t validate it for you. 

How stupid is that??? 

It’s more than silencing your VOJ or stopping yourself from “shoulding”. It’s about recognizing that you have something about your creativity that is entirely and uniquely YOU, and you need to lean into it without caring what anyone else thinks. For me, my most creative ideas come out when I’m doing the thing for which I have a love that no one else has ever appreciated - and it’s a thing that I once stopped doing because of the less-than enthusiastic reactions that I’d received to it. So I challenge anyone who reads this to think about what they used to love and then go out and do it - but do it quietly and completely on your own and just see what happens.