I aspire to a life spent making and fixing things - ideas, writings, music, software, home improvements, my body, more recently woodworking. I’ve always been this way, creating because it feels good, because it helps someone, to escape, for the pure pleasure of building something from nothing or making an old thing new. In my 50’s I’ve struggled with my own mind interfering with that creativity.
When we create, we tap into the bliss of the present moment … our mental health improves … we get younger … abundance finds us in odd ways … we - and others - discover who we really are …
— Martha Beck, Reasons to Create for No Reason
Life provides us constant opportunities to learn, to see things differently. Often my first reaction to something new is to run it through my ‘Brad filter’: “Oh that’s exactly like this other thing that happened to me, I’ll treat it like that. If that doesn’t work I’ll get angry because I can’t bend it to look like my previous experiences. Anyways, let me tell you about this one time…” Psychologically this falls into the Cognitive Bias bucket, our tendency to see things as supporting our existing view of the world.
I like to think of this bias as an evolutionary benefit, allowing us to avoid re-learning complex systems and scenarios. The downside is that it leads to shallow thinking, where we miss nuance and deeper learning. It also limits our creativity.
As I get older I can feel the Brad filter becoming heavier and more complex, the experiences of more years having an additive effect. I know more things, have read more, learned more, and had more heartbreak but all that gets in the way sometimes. I find myself less able to fully enjoy things, less willing to dive deep into understanding them.
Life Lessons. I’m in the middle of a marketing course, learning about effective online ad campaigns. Marketing is nothing if not creative, combining psychology, art, and language to help a customer make a decision quickly. Effective marketing means seeing through another person’s eyes: filtering it through my own preconceived notions is anathema.
My “Soul Language Assessment” pointed out that my strength lies in scholarship, a solitary life of study and synthesizing ideas from different sources into new things. We are explorers by nature, innately curious. As the saying goes, “A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for.” I view a scholarly life as one of a ship at sea, exploring. It’s okay - in fact crucial - that I bring my own experiences to bear in creating new ideas, but when it reaches the level of preventing curiosity and deeper understanding then I’m in trouble.
Buddhism asks us to look at every moment with wonder, approaching it with the mind of a beginner. As with all of Buddhism’s Jedi mind tricks this is a practice, but one that I’m seeing as increasingly important as that Brad filter gets in the way more and more.
"in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few"
— Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryū Suzuki
Coda. As I write this I realize the discussion is steering into the deeper Buddhist concept of self/non-self. Perhaps the Brad filter can be viewed as too much clinging to the self, although I would like to think of it more as ‘embracing the wisdom of years’. There is a fragile balance between saying “No” and using that wisdom to focus on my creative work, and saying “Yes” and remaining curious about what is new and present. My creativity will thrive when I can find that balance.