The Case for Taking Creative Risks

Welcome to Creatives Anonymous, a weekly newsletter about navigating creativity in the 21st century. It inspires, encourages, and empowers readers to take back their creative power.

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The end of this month marks three years since I Irish Goodbye’d my corporate job and joined the work of the self-employed (if you ever meet me IRL, ask for the story because it’s a good one). 

It’s also probably the biggest risk I’ve taken in my life so far. 

I wouldn’t consider myself a risk junkie, but I have been known to take a few risks: moving to a city where I knew one person, quitting my job without a full client load lined up, and starting this newsletter, to name a few. 

In my experience, there are three types of risk takers: those who are risk averse, only taking risks if there is a clear reward; those who throw caution to the wind, not caring about the outcome; and those who take calculated risks—risks where they might not know the outcome but know are a sure bet and will likely work out. 

The most sure bets you can make? The bets you make on yourself.  

Betting on yourself means believing in yourself. It means having conviction in your decisions. It means telling yourself, “This will work,” despite your doubts and the doubts of others. When you bet on yourself, you can control the destiny and the outcome. 

This is especially true when it comes to our creative endeavors. We often fear taking creative risks because they won’t succeed. We get so caught up in measuring the success that we’re afraid to try. 

We’re seeing this happen in Hollywood, especially lately with the quality of movies and storytelling. Instead of pushing the envelope, studios increasingly rely on the comfort of reboots, remixes, and sequels (Do we really need another Ghostbusters or Kong v. Godzilla movie?) because they know they’ll be successful because of the built-in audience. 

Seeing this, it’s clear that studios look at the success of the movies in terms of money and ROI versus the creative production and the resonance of the story. They want to prioritize the sure bets, the ones that are guaranteed to be a blockbuster hit, versus the wild cards (the irony is that some of the best movies of all time resulted from creative risks). They’re afraid of taking the creative risk because it doesn’t align with their idea of success.

That said, we can’t measure creative success in sales or revenue; we can only measure it in non-tangibles like self-expression, personal growth, and resonance. 

If we’re only looking for the money, we’re creating for the wrong reasons. Creating goes from being something that’s supposed to be fun to something we dread and don’t want to do. We also destroy all the experimentation that goes into the work. We find ourselves going through the motions and stuck in a comfort zone, creating work that feels stale and uninspired. Just look at the Marvel Phase 1 movies compared to now. The Phase 1 movies were so good because of the creative risks they took. 

True creativity happens when we take risks and start to bet on ourselves. 

There’s something magical about saying, “Let’s try it and see what happens.” Even if it doesn’t work out, it’s better than not trying at all. And honestly, in most cases, what do you have to lose? 

I’ll be the first to admit that not all my creative endeavors have been successful. I’ve started countless blogs that I never saw through, a podcast, and so many hobbies. But I took the risk anyway. That’s because success for me has never been about making money from my creative work—it’s been about sharing my ideas, making people think, and creating work that resonates with them. If I can achieve that from my creative work, that’s true success. Making money from it would just be a bonus. 

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.

So, instead of asking yourself, “What if it doesn’t work out?” ask yourself, “What if it does?”

CREATIVE CORNER

• 🎞️ What I’m consuming: I finally got my hands on A Court of Mist and Fury. I already like it so much better than the first one.

• 💡 What I’m loving: I was fortunate to catch the Northern Lights over the weekend and can cross it off my bucket list.

• 🎨 What I’m working on: I bought some gouache paint to experiment with and will finally start picking out some of my “greatest hits” photos to hang in my apartment. 

• 💭 Weekly musing:

Thank you 💕

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