When courage becomes comfort

Does creative resistance hold you back? I’ve gone more than a few rounds with it.

At one time, after writing, pressing publish was an act of courage. I worried about what you would think. About your judgement.

That fear—that creative resistance—kept me from publishing regularly for more than a decade. 

Now, though, repetition has turned courage into comfort. 

I still care what you think. I hope you like and get value from what I write. 

But if you don’t … it’s fine. 

Crush creative resistance with repetition 

“All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten,” is a famous book by Robert Fulgham. 

But I'm starting to think that everything I need to know I learned in the gym. 

The gym teaches us that comfort creates stagnation. Once an exercise becomes easier, you’re no longer improving yourself. 

But the lesson runs deeper. If you push yourself, your comfort zone is always on the move. What was hard yesterday becomes routine today. 

So we have to keep advancing. 

And so it is with acts of creativity. 

I’ve written consistently now for a couple of years. Most weeks, a newsletter. Plenty of essays on my site and LinkedIn. 

Writing is hard. And always will be. But emotionally, it’s no longer challenging to press publish. So it is time to find that next frontier—the next thing that feels challenging and emotionally difficult. 

Video. 

A new flavor of fear 

Ali Abdaal’s “Part-Time YouTuber Academy” covers it all: equipment, scripting, optimizing for SEO, setting up an idea fountain, speaking tips, creating your studio. 

Abdaal, a physician, has built his YouTube channel to 1.75 million subscribers. He drives over $100,000 a month in revenue. 

He knows what he’s doing with video. Which is good, because I certainly do not.

For a long time, resistance has given me lots of reasons to avoid video:

• My voice isn’t right

• I don’t have the correct equipment

• I don’t have a compelling studio / background

• I don’t know how to edit video

• I don’t know how to craft a great video script 

All lies. All easily tackled with learning, and mastered with repetitive creativity. 

And so when I start making videos next month, I’ll once again be afraid of what you think. 

Resistance will try to talk me out of it. 

With repetition, though, creative resistance gets bored. It gets quiet. 

That’s when courage turns to comfort. 

And that’s when it will be time, yet again, to meet resistance somewhere else.