Today’s Read: 6 Minutes

I love witnessing Main Character Energy. And there’s A LOT of it in Manhattan.

You know it when you see it.

It’s that 20-something walking briskly down the street, bopping to music from their AirPods Pro and sipping a $6 oat milk latte. There’s indisputable confidence that the world will simply bend to their will impervious even to the slow walkers around them.

It’s amusing but we all honestly have a bit of that in us. We’re all the main characters in our own personal movies.

In learning to be more self-aware, I’ve been paying more attention to how we actually create these personal narratives.

Pieces of this story surface whenever we introduce ourselves to new people. Everyone has an implicit understanding of what makes someone’s story notable and so we craft a version to guide how people think of us and how they should treat us.

My rendition goes something like: “Hi, I’m Phil. I work at Google (which makes me smart and capable) and I like reading, writing, and cooking (which makes me unique and interesting but not TOO eccentric).”

But that’s just the edited, ready-for-consumption version of our personal narrative. We rarely externalize the more honest versions that we tell ourselves constantly.

They’re the stories that collectively form our identities—defining what groups we belong to, what we believe we’re good at, and what our core beliefs are.

All of our major decisions come down to believing a story we tell ourselves. Whether it’s “I’m really smart”, “I’m a great friend”, or “I’m a capable leader”, we all ultimately make choices and adopt behaviors that are consistent with that narrative.

Sometimes, we’re delighted when reality reinforces that story. Other times, we’re anxious when we face evidence to the contrary. So much of how we think and how we feel can be attributed to how these internal narratives interface with reality.

A plot line I’ve recently been wrestling with is: “Am I creative?” For so long, I would’ve ended that story with a definitive “No, I am NOT creative.”

But I’ve been thinking a lot more about:

* Where’d this story come from?

* How has it impacted me?

* And how do I see this story evolving?

We’ll explore some of that today.

Where’d this story come from?

How I was raised seemed like an obvious place to start.

Like many immigrants, my parents bravely moved to a new country, made new friends, and assimilated into a new culture. They put me in the driver’s seat of achieving the career success associated with the American Dream.

We had a clear playbook: good grades, good school, and a good job.

It was the clear path they wanted for themselves and so they selflessly paved it for their son.

That also meant placing a ton of value on practicality. Anything that didn’t build my capacity to increase wealth and status was deemed a distraction.

Sure, they were willing to sign me up for piano lessons and other creative pursuits but the arts were strictly for developmental purposes.

They read somewhere that those activities would help with our cognitive development, look good on a college application, and ultimately put us in a better position for the actual activities they’d prefer us to do.

Besides having a brief adolescent phase where I wanted to be a breakdancer and a filmmaker, I never had any serious desire to pursue a less conventional career path (probably much to my parent’s relief).

For a long time, I believed practical career paths were fundamentally better because they were well-traveled and obvious whereas creative ones were unpaved and uncertain.

And so I decided that being creative just wasn’t an essential part of my story.

How has this story impacted me?

This didn’t just influence my hobbies and career choices, it also created a strong association between creativity and risk-taking.

I assumed that seriously pursuing something creative would require a high-risk tolerance, a financial safety net, or some obvious, once-in-a-generation type talent.

I had none of those things.

And I also wasn’t someone who preferred the more freeform thinking often associated with creatives. I like frameworks that follow a clear structure. I value consistency and I like routine.

Give me a challenge with clear rules and guidelines and I’m usually able to figure it out.

I knew that comfort with risk and uncertainty was essential to truly creative work but others seemed to demonstrate that quality much more often than I did.

Best case, I figured I’d be the one administering the cure for cancer but not creative enough to actually discover it.

And I was okay with that!

Sure, growth mindset blah blah blah…but I happily gave up the mantra of being creative in favor of other stories like “I’m smart”, “I’m consistent” and “I’m practical.”

I admired my friends pursuing art, building startups, and doing cutting-edge research from afar. They’ll play their game and I’ll play mine which has more clear rules and achievable milestones.

Plus, I was getting pretty good at it too.

But as I got into these new hobbies—particularly writing—I started reflecting on how this story started evolving.

I didn’t identify as creative and yet I seemed to be spending an increasing amount of time thinking about it.

How do I see this story evolving?

I can’t remember how I stumbled upon Lawrence Yeo’s More to That newsletter, but it’s quickly become one of my favorites. The Arc of the Practical Creator not only inspired this post but ultimately reshaped how I think about creativity.

Creativity has more to do with the authentic desire to express, and less to do with the art form itself.

For example, it’s tempting to call a painter a “creative person,” but it all depends on why he paints. If he does so because his mother is a famous painter that expects him to carry on the family name, then painting is not a form of creative expression for him. It’s a job.

An act of expression can only be deemed creative when it is aligned with one’s true curiosities and interests.

- Lawrence Yeo in The Arc of the Practical Creator

For a long time, I couldn’t believe someone was creative without evidence that they could consistently generate new ideas. Being creative was an identity defined by some minimum threshold of ability—very much like saying “I’m an athlete.”

It’s a valid definition, but I actually love Lawrence’s reframing of it. Creativity is a desire. It’s less about output and talent and more about a willingness to explore your curiosities and interests without a straight line drawn toward practicality.

Is my writing Pulitzer-worthy? No.

Are my ideas original and earth-shattering? I don’t think so.

But Lawrence’s framing allows me to finally say: “I am creative”.

I’m not taking on this identity to be self-congratulatory or to somehow validate my hobbies.

It’s just simply my way of expressing a newfound desire to explore different ideas and curiosities without any agenda other than personal interest.

Being creative isn’t an identity I’ve necessarily earned, but one I’m choosing to adopt because of the qualities I associate with it.

Telling myself that “I am creative” means finding joy in the intrinsic rewards of working on my craft.

It’s being consistent with putting something out there despite not always knowing how my work is going to be received.

It’s shedding that old identity of “I am risk-averse” because I know the fear of failure destroys creativity by making us gravitate towards more certain, simpler answers.

It’s adopting a willingness to try new things, leaning into the discomfort of being bad at something early on but also knowing I’ll likely gain something of value at the end.

So I guess this really is “New year, new me!”

I’m really excited to test-drive this identity this year.

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