Re-framing oneself
For some reason I resonate with this blog post by Winnie Lim so much. I don’t know if it’s our age or just a sign of times, but I had a similar realisation in the last couple of years, and an eventual breakthrough.
As in, I found myself too attached to some ideas of myself that were crippling me.
And also, these ideas of myself were attached to some concepts that were inherently biased or distorted.
Specifically the concept of what creativity is, and therefore what a creative person does, and therefore what being a creative person looks like, and therefore a having a model to try and match.
This is wrong, in the sense that my ideas about creativity (and all the consequential) are too narrow, too specific, not based on reality but on something else.
What is this something else then? I have a few guesses:
- I believe it has to do with the media, most of all. The way that (social and traditional) media sell us ideas to sell us stuff. That’s the biggest lens distortion of our times.
- Another good guess is the schooling system, in the sense that from an early age we’ve been taught what creativity is in a certain way, by teachers and their teaching methods, which might not be the best for everyone.
Freeing the concept of “creativity” from the stereotypes, labels, and biases felt like freeing myself from Myself. It would be very worth trying to apply the same principles to other parts of myself that I intuitively feel need to be changed or refreshed. Because it works.
And also it would be a good idea to keep this technique of re-framing always in mind, even for other concepts, other people, other places.
On a higher psychological level, all this has to do with the ego, I believe. And with the psychological trap of identifying myself with my ego.
As it could be obvious to anyone that ever did a bit of introspection, or self analysis, (or meditation) we tend to identify ourselves with our own thoughts, while our thoughts will happen almost independently from our will, most of the time. As emotional reactions more than willful thinking.
And so in a way, I believe we are not our thoughts, let alone the idea that our Egos have of ourselves.
Again, it might be obvious but I feel I am many things at once (as I believe everybody else is) and trying to narrow myself into a single identity/idea is just hurtful and counterproductive. And kinda childish, if you ask me.