The Creative Process: Build Mental Resiliency as a Creator | Mark Samples | Skillshare
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The Creative Process: Build Mental Resiliency as a Creator

teacher avatar Mark Samples, Writer, Musician, Musicologist

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      0:42

    • 2.

      Build Mental Resiliency: A Lesson from Joshua Waitzkin

      5:04

    • 3.

      Take Action: Course Project

      1:21

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About This Class

In order to do your best creative work, you need to build mental resiliency. In this short course, I will share with you a mindset that will improve your creative process.

In this short, targeted lesson, I'll share with you the approach that Joshua Waitzkin calls "making sandals." When you walk a thorny road, you can either pave the road with leather, or you can make sandals. 

If you are feeling fragile or assailed, let this course encourage you to develop your ability to meet adversity. 

This course is for any artist—musicians, writers, filmmakers, designers—who want to make this their best creative year yet.

Meet Your Teacher

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Mark Samples

Writer, Musician, Musicologist

Teacher

Hi, I'm Mark. I'm a writer, a musician, and a professional musicologist.

A lot of creatives--writers, musicians, filmmakers, artists--struggle to consistently tap into their creative flow. I create courses that help them get clarity and make a plan, so that they can summon and harness their creative energies.

I'm on a mission to help artists (writers, musicians, filmmakers, illustrators, graphic designers) gain access to time-tested creative principles and processes to help them make great art, consistently. I do this through my teaching here on Skillshare, through my teaching at a U.S. university, and on my website at www.mark-samples.com.

If you'd like to find out more, please follow my Skillshare profile, and if you have any suggestions you'd like to see for fut... See full profile

Related Skills

Personal Development Mindset
Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Want to do your best creative work, it matters how you respond to adversity. It matters how you respond to the criticisms that will inevitably come your way. It matters how you respond to those comments that will come when you finally share your art with the world. My name is Mark Samples. I'm a writer, musician, and professional musicologist. And in this short lesson, I'm going to share with you a mindset that will help you deal with adversity in your creative life. It's called making sandals. So if you want to do better, receiving criticism and have more mental resiliency, let's get started. 2. Build Mental Resiliency: A Lesson from Joshua Waitzkin: Start with a quote. A man wants to walk across the land, but the Earth is covered with thorns. He has two options. One is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals. I want to tell you a quick story about Joshua Watskin. Joshua Watskin was a chess prodigy. You may have heard of him without knowing it, if you ever saw the 1990s film Waiting for Bobby Fisher. Waiting for Bobby Fisher was about the young chess life of Josh Watskin. As a chess prodigy, Watskin found himself competing at the highest levels as a teenager. And Watskin learned that at the highest levels of competition, there are always dirty players. As Watskin recounts in his book, The Art of Learning, which is one of my favorite books of all one newly immigrated Russian player who was 15-years-old used to kick him under the table hard when they were playing chess games. He would do it just when no one was looking so that only Watskin could tell and the judges never saw. Then Boris would get up from the table in the middle of a chess game and go discuss the positions with his coaches, which is, of course, blatant cheating. But because they were speaking in Russian, no one knew what they were saying, and, of course, they denied that they were ever talking about the chess match. Because Watskin and Boris were two of the top players in their age bracket, they would always meet in very important games. And the injustice of these actions that Boris made inevitably threw Watskin off of his game at critical moments and would lead to him losing matches. Boris had his number. The influx of young Russian players in the early 1990s and their questionable tactics had led other United States players to quit the game altogether, indignant, they were so frustrated with the injustice of it all. But it wasn't until his second career as a martial artist that Watskin was able to make sandals, to harness his emotions in the face of injustice and turn the tables on his opponents. Watskin tells a story in the book of one particularly nasty opponent who would throw head butts directly to the nose when he started losing a match. This opponent did exactly this twice to Watskin in the United States National Tai Chi championship. Watskin went balistic for 10 seconds. He was literally seeing red. Why did this opponent take this strategy? Naturally because it worked for him, his opponents would lose their cool, make mistakes, and allow him to win the match. Thankfully, Watskin came back to his senses in time to win the match. But reflecting on his performance after the championship, he realized a weakness in himself and went to work on it. As Watskin describes, he spent the next full year seeking out creepy opponents in his gym, ones who would go for the eyes, for the throat, or for the groin. Through this intentional practice with injustice, he learned to neutralize these moves and eventually learned the important skill of accepting his fear of getting hurt. So when Watskin faced that same dirty opponent in the finals the very next year, it was no contest. This is how Watskin described it. I began by controlling him, neutralizing his aggression, building up a lead. Then he got emotional and started throwing head butts. My reaction was very different this time. Instead of getting mad, I just rolled with his attacks and threw him out of the ring. His attacks didn't touch me emotionally, and when unclouded, I was simply at a much higher level than him. It was amazing how easy it all felt when I didn't take the bait. So what can we learn as creators from Joshua Watskin's example? Just as Joshua Watskin anticipated and adapted to unfair practices in his competitions, creators need to prepare themselves for a range of adversities. A critic misinterprets your work. Someone steals your art and calls it their own. Haters troll you relentlessly on social media. How are we as creators supposed to respond to these circumstances? Well, remember, at the highest levels, there are always dirty players. If you allow them to throw you off your game in critical moments, they will have one. Instead, harness your own emotions, play your own game. Instead of trying to pave every thorny road with leather, make sandals. 3. Take Action: Course Project: Let's end this lesson with a quick activity that can help you apply what you have learned. Make a quick list of the triggers in your creative life, the situations that throw you off balance and leave you emotionally raw. Maybe it's an unfairly critical comment. Maybe it's harsh deadlines or lost opportunities. Make a list of the situations that you know affect you emotionally. Next, write down how these situations affect your creative energies, affect your ability to get creative work done. Write down how it makes you feel and what the effects of these situations have been on you in the past. Awareness is the first step to understanding how to make sandals for yourself, how to create mental resilience. Thanks so much for joining me for this short targeted lesson on how to improve your creative process. My name is Mark Samples. If you liked this lesson, I have many more on my website, and you can sign up for my newsletter where I send out every Monday one timeless insight or example of how to do your best creative work. You can find a link to my website in the resources below this video. Or you can just search Mark Samples creative process, and you'll find it. In the meantime, happy Creating.