How am I Supposed to be Happy and Creative if I Don’t Know What I Want?
“What do you want?”
“I guess I just want to be happy.”
And… what does that actually mean? Maybe that statement is followed by a little fumbling, maybe it looks like…, I might like to try…, I don’t know…
Sometimes a vision of “happy” coalesces into something about “creativity,” which gets a little closer, but, “I want to feel more creative” is still pretty vague and might end with, “but I don’t know what I want to create.” Shrug. This is hard.
It is. It is really hard to know what you want. And I want to offer a perspective on why, not to complain, but to help you give yourself a little grace if this feels familiar. (Which may help you move toward actually being able to answer the question.)
This confusion is not a reflection on you.
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If you’ve ever read any philosophy or self-help literature, you know that “happiness” is a confusing word. The Dalai Lama has said that “The point of life is happiness.” On the other hand, lots of authors say that happiness is just a fleeting emotion, and not stable enough to ground our purpose. Brené Brown suggests aiming for joy, James Hollis recommends meaning, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi gives us a guide to pursuing optimal experience.
Gretchen Rubin captures the dilemma well:
“…as I thought about happiness, I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself, but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously—and also more seriously. I wanted to use my time well, but I also wanted to wander, to play, to read at whim. I wanted to think about myself so I could forget myself. I was always on the edge of agitation; I wanted to let go of envy and anxiety about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition….Was I searching for spiritual growth and a life more dedicated to transcendent principles—or was my happiness project just an attempt to extend my driven, perfectionist tendencies to every aspect of my life?”
With all that, we still mean something when we say, “I want to be happy; I want to be creative”, even if it’s just an acknowledgement that it clearly isn’t what we’re feeling now, and that we’d like to stop not feeling it. “Happy” captures something for us, but we may not have the tools to get any farther.
And while they make a valid point, something I’m noticing about these books and articles that discuss how fleeting and vague “happiness” is: they’re putting the blame on the concept of happiness. I wonder if a more helpful question is: how can I tune into what I want better? Why is it that we’re out of touch with ourselves to the point that we don’t know how to know what we want, and what can we do about that?
Why is it so hard to know what I want???
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If you ask any parent what they want for their kids, they probably say, “I want them to be happy.”
Back here again!
What comes next? We want our kids to have the most options when they graduate from school—so make good grades! We want our kids to have healthy bodies—so eat your vegetables! We want our kids to have friends—so be polite!
Wow, what wisdom to see that freedom, health, and friendship factor into a happy life! But let’s be real, the versions of freedom, health, and friendship that are packaged and sold in our society don’t usually meet our needs at a soul level, but they may be all we know (until we start asking questions.) And more complicated, “attaining” these qualities is a completely different experience depending on what sort of body we’re in. A lot of parents see this truth (at least to an extent) and try their best to set the kiddos up for happiness by giving them rules to follow. They recognize that, as adults, they have to hold the hope for a happy future for their children until the children are old enough to hold it for themselves.
“I’ve done the things I was supposed to do; why do I feel so cheated?”
And here we are. As children, we naturally start learning how to exist in this world based off the rules given to us and what we see modeled. We have to trust that the grownups know best because we recognize that the world is too big and we are too little to handle it on our own yet. Really, it makes sense, and it’s not wrong.
This is how we end up with baggage that we carry into adulthood that we don’t even realize we’re carrying, beliefs and habits that we never think to question. Well, of course I need to exceed the sales goal, it’s how I have options going forward. Of course I need to follow this diet, it’s how I show I’m healthy. Of course I need to concede to the people around me, it’s how I make them like me. Everyone I know follows these rules. What do you mean, not follow the rules? That’s an option??? That doesn’t feel safe.
Given how fast-paced, polarized, and hierarchical our lives are, it’s no wonder we don’t take the time to examine the perspectives we learned as children. This society we live in isn’t set up to make us feel spacious and free and safe enough; we have to deliberately seek out that kind of space (and it’s rarely easy to find.) What happens is that, in a big world, we learn rules to function in it, often at the expense of learning how to tune into who we really are and what we really want, and then find ourselves unhappy because we’re following a bunch of rules that don’t take into account our uniqueness.
Again, all this to say, if being happy and creative is something you want, but you can’t put your finger on what that means or how to do it, it’s really, really understandable. Struggling to find your happy doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. You get to make that struggle mean something more powerful.
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“You’re doing a Herculean job of living up to standards you truly believe are right and good. I admire that very much. It takes incredible self-discipline to go against your nature. If I scolded you about this effort, I’d just be administering another dose of punitive socialization. I’m not condemning you in the slightest. But I do want you to notice one thing: Whenever you go against your true nature to serve your culture, you freaking hate it.”
One of my favorite books is entitled Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life (by Jungian psychoanalyst James Hollis.) The first time I read it, I was simply feeling a lack of purpose, and gobbled up books that I thought might help me. I assumed the title of this one could have been translated into: “It’s not too late! You can still find purpose even after you’ve graduated college, had kids, and thought your major-decision-making season was over. You get a second chance!” (Long title, but catchy, right?!) But what he actually means is: you need a lot of lived experience to build the tools you’ll need to do the hard work of really growing up.
The struggle is a healthy part of the process.
Hollis posits that the first stage of life is supposed to be full of “supposed to’s.” It’s a time of learning and acquiring the knowledge and skills you need to function on your own. The Major Arcana of the tarot tells a similar story: the first line, representing the first stage of growth (Magician to Chariot,) is about learning what you’re capable of and how you relate to the world. If you’ve arrived at a point where you say, “I’ve done everything I’m supposed to and I still don’t know what I want,” that doesn’t mean you’ve messed up, lost time, or done anything wrong. The fact that you’re asking this question at all means you’ve done what you needed to do to arrive at the question. And you might arrive there in your mid-20s or your mid-90s, but arriving there is part of growing.
“Do not judge this history, for it was as it had to be, but do not abdicate the possibility of the present either.”
To summarize, we all want to be happy, but it’s hard to know what will actually make us happy. This is because as children, we necessarily had to work with rules and models given to us by others to make our way into the world. But because those tools (at best) weren’t designed for us as individuals with depth and complexity (or at worst, were designed to maintain a status quo,) they only worked so well. We eventually arrive at a place of frustration that we want to be happy and creative but don’t know how…which means now we’re ready to customize the tools (or make entirely new ones!) to take the next step to owning what we want.
And you do know.
I’ve learned to own the fact that I really like taking still lifes of yarn. That’s a niche.
When I work with a new client, I like to start with the owning, which can be a lot of work! Owning what we want means admitting the fears that come alongside. But, we can take small steps. Here’s a few you can try on your own to open yourself up to what you want.
First, try a small mindset shift. Instead of focusing on the lack of knowing what will make you happy and trying to “find it,” consider trying to make space for it. Start from scratch.
(Here’s what I mean with a dieting example: I’ve sometimes adopted limited diets to help me through some health situations. I find it’s really, really hard to go through life with a mindset focused on what I can’t eat. I really crave pizza, but I’m not eating bread or dairy. Dang! isn’t as easeful as, I have veggies, legumes and fish. What can I create with that? Starting with “this is what I have to work with, what can I create?” can be a more helpful mindset than, “this is hard with all these rules getting in my way!”)
A few ways to practice this generative mindset:
Contemplate a feeling you’d like to experience more of in your daily life, and try to make it as specific as possible. Peace, Pride, Joy, and Ease are ones I’ve heard a lot. When you have a choice to make, consider what would bring you more of that feeling. In the spirit of starting from scratch, one way this might play out is if you have some time that opens up in your schedule, and you get to decide what to do with it. What would bring me more peace? could guide you to a way to pass that time that is more meaningful than acting on autopilot. Notice how you feel when you use that time guided by a feeling you want to generate, and if you can, compare it to times you’ve gone on autopilot. What’s different? Focusing this awareness toward how your choices create your feelings can cast some light on what actually makes you happy.
Consider your loved ones, and all the things you want for them. What you would give them if you could. Is it easier to feel like they deserve these wonderful things? Now, take a look at the things you would want to give your loved one and refine them into small things that are actually doable. For example, if your loved one is experiencing lots of stress, how could you actually help a loved one feel more peace in their life today? Perhaps it’s giving them 15 minutes of alone time. Perhaps it’s helping them with a difficult task or offering to listen to them express their feelings. Come up with a few. Now, remember that humans are inherently worthy and you are also a human. It’s okay if this feels like a stretch! Now see if you can find a way to give yourself one of these small things. Exercise self-compassion, remember you’re just trying something out, and pay attention. Notice where the happiness is.
In her wonderful book, Tea and Cake with Demons, Adreanna Limbach suggests a simple “internal temperature check” practice: in those very first moments in the morning, before you’ve rolled out of bed, take a moment to notice yourself. Notice your emotions, physical sensations. Notice your thoughts about what your day “will” or “should” be. Allow yourself a few seconds to consider that some of what has flooded into your experience might not originate in you, but might be baggage you are carrying, and have already picked up again for the day. Ask yourself, is any of this helpful or unhelpful? Limbach then asks, “Is there any opportunity to drop the narrative a bit and simply rest with the raw material of feeling your body in bed?” And from there, can you consider what you do want to carry into your day, even if it’s just a little more awareness?
What these practices do is bring an energy of allowing, rather than forcing. Hard work is not necessarily forceful work. We’re trying to make space to allow connection with something deeper that’s already there—as a coach, I believe we all have an inner wisdom that is an amazing guide, and listening to that wisdom is a skill that can be learned. And always, have compassion for who and where you are. Remember that this is growing up and growing up isn’t meant to be easy, and it’s your inherent right as a human to grow.
See what you discover! I’d love to hear about it, too! And if you would like more support finding your Most Creative Happy, this is work I love to do; you can schedule a free chat with me to find out what that might look like. Messages are always welcome, and until then, stay magnificent. (You already are.)
Newsletter subscribers get some extra avenues for exploring the ideas I’ve written about here: