Do you believe great creativity comes from tragedy and suffering? That genius like Amy Winehouse need to have had the depth of feeling and suffering she had in order to make music like she did? In this Soul Shots episode I question this myth and ask you to look at where you are justifying and choosing dysfunction over a different more loving way, and does this harm your creativity or not.
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Hello, welcome to today's soul shots episode. And today I want to just talk about choosing dysfunction versus not choosing disfunction. And what's inspired this is a couple of things, one of a personal event that happened to me and the other one was watching the Chef's Table. And I've been sort of slowly watching this as a little treat when I'm just tired and want to break and switch off.
And there was an episode that I was watching, where there was a husband and wife team. And they work together in the kitchen and it's their own restaurant. And they sort of started talking about their arguments and their passion and the woman basically sort of said, you know, she believed that arguments in their relationship sort of fueled the food and the creativity of their food and, and helped this, the food be a success. Like the sort of fighting and dysfunction in their relationship was blessing. Like it was a blessing in their creativity. They bought that passion uh, fighting into the food and it made the food better.
And I want to just question this because as an artist myself as well, like, you know, this, there's this belief of the starving artist, the suffering artist, you know, like Amy Winehouse is a classic example, she had beauty and soul and depth and, and yet she suffered greatly.
And did that come from the suffering ?You know, and it's believed that to be a great creator. We have to really suffer. And we have to kind of be dysfunctional. And I remember myself on this journey with my own art work and just deciding one day that like, I didn't need to be dysfunctional to be creative. I could still create absolute beauty. I could still create absolute depth and a feeling and sentiment and whatever it was, I wanted to convey, without actually having to live in dysfunction. Without actually having to, to suffer I mean, not saying like, I didn't have experiences of grief or sadness or things, you know, have loss in my life. Those things have certainly been things I've been able to draw from, but it's not like I need those for inspiration.
The creativity has helped me work through those things, but it hasn't been a need, like my creativity is there regardless the same with absolutely everyone else's and the choosing the dysfunctional, believing this story that this dysfunction helps the creativity. It's a myth.
It's an absolute myth. It's not true. And I'm challenging any creative out there to really break this pattern because it is a pattern of dysfunction and it isn't necessary. And creativity, I mean, life around us creates itself all the time. Nature is constantly in creativity, but it's not in dysfunction. Right. It's in perfect order and it doesn't need an existential crisis. Obviously an existential crisis can, can bring A certain aspect that may be, you can explore through creativity, but it doesn't mean that the creativity without that isn't as good. And it isn't, it isn't as powerful. Like you are able to access the depths of who you are without dysfunction. And there's a difference between feeling and dysfunction.
You know, you can feel the passion in your relationship without having to have the dysfunction of literally physical violence. Like, I mean, they were literally throwing and tipping food on each other, like in an act of violence. Like that's dysfunction. That's not passion. And that's dysfunction.
And there's this real myth that dysfunction feeds creativity, but no. Our feelings, our thoughts, whatever our experiences could be expressed through creativity, and you can tap into those depths, but it doesn't mean you have to live in dysfunction.
And yeah. The other example of this was with my own partner. Like last week, we actually had a blazing, wow. We shouted at each other. We said a few things that were very hurtful, but they were things that we obviously hadn't been saying, and we got them off our chests and it helped in the long run in our relationship. Like it brought us closer together and we were certainly more close afterwards. But, that's not how I choose our relationship to go forward. I'm not going to believe that we needed the argument to have a functional, beautiful connection and moment in that relationship, I'm going to believe that that argument did fuel some positive things in our relationship, but there were better ways of being, there were better ways of opening to that.
I am very consciously opening up that process of like, well, how can we have these truth moments? How can we have this communication and dialogue without it being dysfunctional, without it being this big fight. And so, where in your life are you just accepting dysfunction and thinking that it's a good thing. Like I ask you to question that and just be curious, right, don't blame yourself. Just be curious.
Thank you so much for listening. I wish you a beautiful week of function and, and positivity and love and joy and all the good stuff. Uh, enjoy. I love you. Bye.