seeking the Personal

In any and all creative pursuits, I am always in need of this reminder:

When we try to fit ourselves (and our work)
into what we think others want from us,

we miss freely representing the part of us (our dreams & ideas)
that might actually attract & resonate most with others...
It feels more safe to produce work that I think people want to see, or what I think they want to hear. When I applied to colleges once upon a blue moon, I remember believing I would be successful if only I could just cater my essays to the application committee (i.e., what I imagined they were looking for in a perfect candidate).

But the more I tried to come across as "cool" and "awesome" and "intellectual," the more stilted and stuffy and dreadfully boring it all became! Because it was not me. It was me trying to be interesting, which was not interesting at all. And unfortunately, some of the schools agreed.

Thankfully, there was { one } essay that escaped this ordeal of self-presentation. It was an essay I included for several schools at the last minute, though I wrote it for a local scholarship. Not expecting much to it, I played around with the essay prompt (a silly one about incorporating vocabulary words into an essay) -- and ended up writing one of my favourite pieces ever, a story about a traveler choosing courage and stepping into a Land of Adventure.

It was me. It was different because I am different. Yet it was universal, it connected with the people who read it, because I am human just like they are. And... you can say the rest is (academic) history!

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I'm convinced I do my best creative work -- even for clients and on this blog -- when I am creating not first & foremost "for" others (outside), but "from" my heart and senses (inside). But the power of that is something I forget over and over again. Below are some tips/reminders that I use to re-orient myself to the Personal:

What about you, have you ever found yourself in a similar situation? What do you do to grasp that anchor of what is truly Personal?

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Carl Rogers is one of America's greatest psychologists, and an inspiration for me as researcher & therapist. He was the founder of the humanist movement in psychology, which focuses on understanding the whole person and his/her rich inner world. More on him and his philosophies on human potential, to come!