10 Ingredients for a Creative Mindset

Welcome to Creatives Anonymous, a weekly newsletter that explores what it means to be a modern-day creative. It inspires, encourages, and empowers readers to take back their creative power.

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The key to living a more creative life is all in our mindset. Here are 10 ingredients I’ve found help with building my creative mindset: 

1. Being cringe

Cringe is a natural part of life. It's every phase we go through, every experiment we run, and everything we try. It represents who we were at that moment in time and the skills and knowledge we had at the time. If we want any kind of success, we have to allow ourselves to be cringe. Being cringe means being brave enough to take the leap, going through the awkward phase, and coming out ahead.  

2. Embrace a beginner’s mindset

A beginner’s mindset encourages us to lean into the process, make mistakes, and learn. It invites us to approach any new project with a new perspective and open mind. It also means accepting that failure is part of the creative process. Having a beginner's mindset allows us to enjoy the creative process without putting pressure on ourselves to succeed from the get-go.

3. Take risks

True creativity happens when we take risks and start to bet on ourselves. When you bet on yourself, you can control the destiny and the outcome. For any creative endeavor to work, you need to believe it will succeed and then determine what success looks like. If you can be bold enough to bet on yourself and believe in your work, you’ll find the success you want.

4. Let yourself play 

As we age, we lose the ability to play in our creative practice. We need to bring that play back into our creative practice. But to do that, we need to remember how we like to play in the first place. Identifying how we like to play is a way to reclaim our true passions and interests. It’s a reminder of who we were as kids and what we loved doing in the hopes that we reconnect with those interests again.

5. Make bad art

Making bad art is the only way to get good. Pushing through the bad requires three mindset shifts from us: accepting the level that we’re at, letting go of expectations, and being brave enough to try. Everyone starts somewhere and we can’t be afraid to be bad. 

6. Done is better than perfect

Perfectionism prevents us from moving out of our heads and into action. The longer you hold onto something, the more you stay stuck. And the more you stay stuck, the more you inhibit your inner artist. Instead, we need to do it messy, do it scared, and do your best. Nothing will ever be perfect, but maybe that’s the point.

7. Get out of Tinker Town

All creatives know Tinker Town too well: our private safe space where we can mess around with our creative projects until we're ready to share them with the public. Yet, the more time we spend in Tinker Town, the less time we spend putting our work out there. However, when we get the courage to leave Tinker Town and put our work out there, we gain momentum and motivation to create even more.

8. Turn rejection into redirection

The loss we feel when rejected can turn into gains and strengths. When we heal from rejection, we can channel it into something better. Instead of settling for something mediocre, we can reach for what we really want. Rejection allows us to take matters into our own hands. We can use rejection to create the opportunities we want, not just wait for them to come. We can use it to fuel the change we wish to see in ourselves and our work.

9. Survive the waiting season

Surviving the waiting season is a mental game. It’s the biggest test of our patience. The only way to get out of it is to go through it. It means putting in the reps and being disciplined to stay consistent, no matter how much or little progress we see. It’s about not wavering when things get tough, no matter how much you want to give up and quit. It’s about being grateful for the opportunities you have in front of you. It’s about reflection and looking at things through a different lens. Instead of rushing the waiting season, we need to lean into it.

10. Forget the validation

We view validation as a measure of our worthiness. The more positive acknowledgment we receive, the better we feel about ourselves. It confirms that we are doing all the right things and are good enough. Yet, trusting our gut and having enough conviction to forge the right path for us becomes much harder. When we don’t live to please anyone else but ourselves, we’re a lot happier, our work is much better, and we have a stronger sense of self.

Creative Corner

• 🎞️ What I’m Consuming: F1 is BACK! I went to a watch party for the Australian Grand Prix and we are going to be in for a heck of a season

• 💡 What I’m Loving: Seeing all the spring flowers pop up

• 🎨 What I’m Working On: My new content project, Culture Slant

• 💭 Weekly Musing:

Thank you 💕

If you liked this newsletter, I’d love it if you could forward it to someone who you think would like it, too!

I’m so grateful for all of your support!

Alexa Phillips is a consultant, creator & educator. She is the founder of Bright Eyes Creative, a Seattle-based consultancy and media company that helps founder-led consumer brands and creatives build content-driven brand experiences & media.

Where to find me:

• Learn more about my services 

• Listen to my recent podcast episodes.

• Follow along as I build my new content project, Culture Slant, a podcast + newsletter at the intersection of brand, marketing, media, commerce, culture, and technology.

• Join Write Club, free weekly 90-minute co-writing sessions dedicated to helping you knock out all the content you have to write for your business.