This industry perspective is by designer and author Radim Malinic.
Over a decade ago, I was on a plane from London to Bali. I’d been awake for 24 hours. Giddy and excited, I was off to surf the biggest waves of my life.
When I finally arrived, I should have done what every sensible person does after a 7,800-mile jaunt: go lie down. Instead, I rushed to the beach.
There it was: the Indonesian Ocean. Waves every bit as high as I’d hoped. I hired a surfboard, ran into the shimmering turquoise water, and got ready to ride the incoming wave.
Then I was underwater. I’d misjudged my take-off and wiped out.
I had no control of the situation I was suddenly in — I wasn’t even sure which way was up. More enormous waves crashed around me as I held my breath way longer than I ever had.
Somehow, I got my head above the water and some oxygen back into my lungs. Tired, bewildered, and clinging to my board like a shipwreck survivor, I washed up on the beach. I wanted the sand to swallow me as I watched other surfers easily handle those same waves.
Looking back, I realise my expectations didn’t match my skill level. Yes, it was embarrassing, but it also connected perfectly as an analogy for how we sometimes use or misuse creativity.
Whether we have a creative career, run a creative business, or live a creative life, embracing new skills and ambitious projects is vital. But we can sometimes run towards things that are far too big for us at that moment. And so we wipe out.
Think back to the first time you found yourself too far out of your depth to cope. When you overloaded yourself with deadlines, your perfectionism derailed you, or your skills didn’t match the client’s needs, and everything went wrong.
How did you feel immediately afterward? I’m guessing you felt like me: embarrassed and exhausted and trying to make myself invisible. But before you cringe at the memory, think about what happened next because that’s where the gold is. How did you respond? What did you learn? And what have you learned since?
We always need two sets of tools. Some tools are practical — the stuff we create with — the others are emotional. The latter is as important as the former for our creative wellbeing because it draws on our emotional tools to help us avoid, or weather, those inevitable creative storms.
If we’re approaching things healthily, our emotional toolkit evolves, and we learn how best to use it. We develop resilience to withstand the natural stresses of creativity (from high-pressure briefs to rejection emails) and recover from them more quickly.
As we grow our practice, we can harness those emotional tools to understand and better use our creativity. As one meditation teacher perfectly put it: “You can’t control the waves, but you can learn how to surf.” In the same way, we can’t control creativity, but we can learn how to wield it.
Surrender to the Waves
If you’re anything like me, you embarked on your creative life with an idealised picture of how it would be: a beautiful, calm lake set in stunning scenery beneath clear blue skies—everything in blissful harmony.
Maybe it was like that at first. We go to the water full of self-belief, believing our natural creative brilliance empowers us with full control. But then the waves catch us and wipe us out. Customers. Clients. Feedback. Amends. Deadlines. Micromanagement. Toxicity. Stress. Burnout.
Creativity is fun. Until the client turns up.
One of the first tests of any creative’s life is grounding our ego and expectations. The first time a client rejects our ideas or asks for minor edits, it can trigger a creative storm: Who dares question our art, and, by extension, us as humans?
Our response is crucial. I admit the first time it happened to me — when it dawned on me that I was fulfilling a client brief, not instigating a revolution in graphic design — I struggled. I didn’t want to let go of the misbelief that, as the creative, I was in control and held the power in the transaction.
In refusing to let go, I expected the waves to bend to my will. And that never happens, although we never believe it until we’re drenched. We believe our creative skills make us the exception to the rule. But, no matter how talented or driven we are, that’s never the case.
By letting go of our unrealistic dreams and high expectations, we gain control in other ways. We can use creativity as an eternal lesson in growing our resilience. It’s tough, but meeting the challenge can take our creativity places we’ll never reach if we keep expecting the process to resolve around us. The creative life is messy and challenging. We can’t win every time—in reality, we lose more often than we win—but that makes the wins taste even more incredible.
Advocating for lower expectations sounds strange. But when we work on controlling our response to outcomes rather than the outcomes themselves, we find more space and energy to devote to our creative practice, and our input becomes stronger.
We can do four simple things to develop resilience in our creative practice: listen, observe, ask and understand.
When we listen, we can fully understand what’s happening and not head down the wrong path.
When we sit back and observe, we can become aware of our role in a given situation. There are times to be vocal and times to listen.
We must ask questions. Relentlessly. And learn to ask better questions that cut to the heart of what we want to know.
Finally, we must understand and respect the natural flow of the creative process.
Crucially, we can never perfect any of these approaches; letting go of ego in our work is an ongoing process. I’ve been learning for almost 25 years, and I’m still finding new ways of doing so.
Resilience in the 21st Century
We all need to build and practice resilience, creative and otherwise. We live in a hyper-connected, forever-on world. We have more connections and opportunities, more tools and technology, than ever before. But we’re equally vulnerable to false narratives of competition, unconstructive criticism and outright cruelty. Heaven and hell are always a click away.
These are the times when we must ground our egos and pride with acceptance of who we are and what we bring. After all, our uniqueness is our greatest asset, and we want to stand out. But when we chase acceptance from others as a creative, we can hide behind our work—this is an untenable dissonance that can only lead to trouble.
Letting go of ego in our work is an ongoing process.
Building resilience means building self-acceptance so that we can remind ourselves that we’re okay, we’re enough, and we belong. Self-acceptance takes power from feelings of comparison and competition we can fall into too easily.
And here’s where those four words come in again:
We must know when to listen to ourselves and others to remain on the right path.
To observe and recognize the reasons why we’re here.
To continue to ask questions on our creative path.
To understand our creative flow and how to dial it up when needed.
Unavoidably, the waves will knock us off, but we can learn to right ourselves more quickly. We can stop looking backward and sideways and focus on looking ahead.
It’s Not Creativity; It’s Us
As we grow to understand ourselves and our creative process better, we can encourage the ideal conditions for our creativity to flourish. In theory, anyway. In practice, our coveted “flow states” get interrupted by a minefield of chaos, half-formed plans, and unexpected challenges. And it’s easy to blame everything and everyone else.
But hear me out: I believe any overwhelm we experience is of our own making.
Through my experiences of overwhelm, wipeout and chronic burnout, I’ve learned that it’s vital to look inward for why my creativity isn’t flowing. Self-honesty is key. Here are the questions I ask myself to check in:
How are you doing?
Sleeping okay?
How about your diet?
Exercised this week?
Social life?
How’s the bank balance?
What’s your screen time like?
Have you planned your week?
If you look at creativity as something you drive versus it driving you, then, like me, you’ll start to believe there’s no such thing as creative block. I can whip a calm lake into a stormy ocean, catastrophise about negative feedback and rejections, and block my light with cluttered and unchecked thoughts. I’ll bet you can, too.
Those four words can guide us to become more mindful, calm the waters and help create the right conditions for our creativity to flow.
We can listen and choose the right thoughts to tune in to.
We can observe our minds and actions and verify what’s actually happening.
We can ask for help when needed and stop struggling alone.
We can grow to understand that all of our thoughts, positive and negative, are just that; thoughts aren’t concrete reality.
In this, we have the power.
Celebrate the Wipeouts
Whether our first wipeout or the one that just happened, we might realise we were chasing too big a wave too soon. One day, we’ll be able to ride them, but for now, it’s enough to step back and make a better plan. We can work to temper our expectations and heighten our resilience. Accepting where we are right now is enough.
Wipeouts are worth celebrating because they keep us on our toes and growing. If all we encounter are calm seas, life becomes pretty dull. Where’s the challenge in replaying a game you won the first time around?
So, get on your surfboard and paddle out. Own it. Enjoy it. Stick with it. It’s always worth the experience.
Radim Malinic is a designer, author, TEDx speaker, and eternally curious human. Living and working in South West London, he runs Brand Nu Studio, an award-winning branding and creative studio; Brand Nu Books, an independent publishing imprint; and Lux Coffee Co, an independent coffee creative company.
Header image by Daniel Sorm on Unsplash.
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