Are you living up to your creative potential? Or are you stuck in a rut? Could it be that the rut is serving you? These are some of the questions we wrestle with in this episode of Emerging Form. We talk about Christie’s sweet spot between struggle and boredom, how fencing (or another new activity) might supercharge your creative process, and LOTS of tips on how to get out of a rut. We finish, as always with a guest. This episode features Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at Columbia University and author of the new book, Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization. We ask him these two questions:
What does self-actualization look like for a creative person?
What’s the path to self-actualization in one’s creative life?
Episode Notes
Christie’s review of Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America’s Stolen Land by Noé Álvarez
Christie’s review of Wired to Create by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire
Kaufman’s NPR interview on Why So Many Gifted Yet Struggling Students are Hiding in Plain Sight
Kaufman’s The Psychology Podcast
Take a Self-Actualization Test
The figure skating routine to lift you out of a rut
En Garde
--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Keep distance, the fencing teacher says,
and by this he means, stay close enough
to your opponent that you could, at any time,
extend, lunge and attack with your point.
All my life, I’ve tried not to keep distance.
All my life, I’ve done my best to avoid
the attack—from either side. And now,
with my silver lamé and my one white glove
and my face safe behind metal mesh, I dig
to find the part of me who craves engagement,
who seeks a bout, who wants to threaten
my target and exploit their vulnerability.
Keep distance, he says, and I understand
that this is how I show up for the game.
This is how I meet not only the opponent,
but, perhaps for the first time, myself.
Episode 15: From rut to self-actualization (with Scott Barry Kaufman)