Are *That* Person’s Opinions Killing Your Creativity?
Are *That* Person’s Opinions Killing Your Creativity?
If ghosts on the ‘gram keep haunting your creative dreams, it’s time to shoo them and their imaginary judgments away.
Welcome (or welcome back!) to Multifaceted, a weekly newsletter about finding delight and direction in a creative life made up of many different interests.
Last week’s post was all about stepping out of your shell and into the spotlight as a multi-passionate creative leader.
Easier said than done, right?
Let’s flip this topic around and talk about the harder stuff – the forms of resistance you’ll crash into before you reach your dreams.
We don't usually like taking accountability for our resistance. Enter the perfect scapegoat: a judgmental ghost from your past.
Here’s how they'll typically sneak up:
You’re this close to diving headfirst into a new creative project. You’re super excited about it. It’s a little out there, but it couldn’t be more you.
And suddenly you get that sinking feeling: “Okay… but what will that person think?”
That person could be your ex-boyfriend or ex-bestie. Your former teacher, coworker, or classmate. Your longtime friend’s judgemental mom or mean older brother.
Whatever role that person once served in your life, their shadow still haunts you. It obscures your vision anytime you think about inching one degree closer to your most authentic, creative, multi-passionate self. If you’re not careful, you’ll let their imagined opinions swallow up your creative dreams.
The weird thing is, that person isn’t someone you have to see anymore. You might never actually meet them in the flesh again. But you know they’re out there, lurking in some corner of your corner of the internet.
Maybe you rubbed elbows with a cliquey friend group that ejected you after you branched off in your own direction. It’s been years, but they’re still all over your Instagram feed.
Or you had a creative collaborator you thought was rooting for you, but then things got really awkward after you moved into a different line of work. There they are on LinkedIn again, posting up a storm.
You've parted ways, but somehow those people haven’t left your radar. So, you assume you're right in the middle of theirs.
You want to move on with your creative project, but you can feel their eyes burning into you. The mere thought of their judgment is enough to make you want to crawl out of your own skin and hide your inner artist somewhere safe.
But why? What is it about the people who used to be in our lives that sparks so much anxiety and resistance?
Well, our brains have been programmed to factor their opinions into our decision-making processes. We’re still worried about what they’ll think of us now because we used to care about what they thought of us back then.
Our past insecurities are reflected in the present-day glimmers we see of those people online. The self-judgment and self-censorship that our younger selves practiced in their company is echoed back at us when their shadows start looming.
These people we used to know are ghosts from our past, but they're also living, breathing reminders of who we used to be.
That ex-girlfriend reminds you of a past version of yourself – one who was unsure about your artistry, identity, and purpose. That old internship director is a beacon of the confusion and not-enoughness you once felt. That former coworker represents your fears about the future and your potential for failure.
Thinking about relationships with people like this can surface reminders of all the ways your creative voice has been suppressed or hurt. They made you feel like you had to tone yourself down. Maybe they felt confused, jealous, and threatened in your company and were careless with their words.
These people may have held some sort of influence over you in the past. But the person you’re worried about doesn’t exist anymore; there’s a different, aged, evolved version walking the earth somewhere.
They’re not the same, and neither are you. You don’t spend time with people like that anymore because, somewhere along the line, you outgrew them.
In a world without social media, you’d either bump into these people at the grocery store and receive some actual human feedback – an eye roll, perhaps, or a genuinely positive catch-up conversation. Or you’d move across the country and literally never see them or worry about them again.
But you live in a world with social media. So, you have to face the fact that you've collected these personalities into your social network, one life chapter at a time. Now, you look out and see this mass of people hovering around you.
They’re not your target audience for your new venture. They’re certainly not your friends. And yet, they have a front-row seat when you publish your poetry for the first time or announce a new career direction that’s lightyears away from what you were doing before.
They’re these entities with real, powerful human energy hidden behind avatars – ghosts slowly orbiting you in cyberspace. You can step into your creative leadership potential, sharing your biggest creative risks and your most vulnerable truths – and the whole orbiting mass can hold a perfect silence.
There's none of the judgment you fear. No praise, either. No feedback. Just… nothing. And yet, everyone can still see you?
This is really unsettling. Connection without connection is eerie and unnatural. It's hard for social creatures like us to contend with. So, we fixate and try filling in the blanks.
Are they judging you? Or do they not care at all? Or… do they care just enough to send you a “like” or quiet kudos you'll never see from the sidelines?
You'll probably never know. These are all purely assumptions. So, why not run with the most favorable one?
I don’t know about you, but I tend to look out at people from my past with feelings that range from neutral to warm. I’m not especially bothered about what they’re doing. But I genuinely hope they’re happy and enjoying their lives. If I scroll past something they shared – like a new passion project or personal update – I’ll send out good vibes and then move on with my day.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to just keep scrolling. We hardly pay a second thought to decisions that were huge deals for the people who made them. We don’t think about other people nearly as much as we think about ourselves. So, other people aren’t scrutinizing us as much as they’re scrutinizing themselves.
This is not to say that what you put out there doesn’t matter to anyone. Just that it doesn’t matter to everyone from your past. It does matter enormously to the right people – the ones who are with you in the here and now.
That person is not the right person. And you cannot afford to let their unverifiable (and probably nonexistent) opinion of you get in the way of your creative path.
By now, you’re probably dancing around a name or two – the ones that make you wince as they kick up resistance and self-doubt. It’s time to shoo those ghosts and their imaginary judgments away.
Say their names out loud. Then, go find them in your corner of the internet – and block them. Remove them. Restrict their visibility across whatever online channels matter to you. They won’t notice and they won't care, I promise.
Now, they won’t have the privilege of seeing your creative growth. This is special stuff; save it for the right people.
Next, dig deeper. That person’s ghost reflects some self-doubt or uncertainty that you need to reconcile. Address it.
It might help to make direct connections between past-you, present-you, and future-you. Own your decisions and tell your story your way. Stitch these chapters of your creative story together and you may feel more confident – and less worried about other people’s opinions.
Lastly, think about the few people whose opinions you genuinely do care about. These should be your fellow creatives with skin in the game. Brave people who know what it’s like to take creative risks, shift directions, and be vulnerable. True supporters who celebrate you in all your messy, multifaceted glory.
Lean on them. Ask them for feedback or moral support. Raise their voices louder than the silence of those old connections you've outgrown.
Putting your creative self out there is always going to be scary. But with the right people in your orbit, it's not so bad.
This can be a difficult challenge for some, especially (as you point out) with social media allowing past relationships to hover around your present life. My belief has always been that creative pursuits are perhaps the only field of human endeavor where others opinions don't matter. "The arts" cannot be advanced if they did matter. It's not like designing a refrigerator, where people's opinions are important.