On Creative Worth and the Value of Positive Regard

What can our angsty teenage selves teach us about exiting the wheel of shame and grandiosity, and working from an innate sense of creative value instead!?

To be human is to walk with the awareness that we are both cosmic beings made of stardust and walking meatsacks full of water, hormones, and bones, eventually food for worms. This duality reminds us that at any moment - regardless of what the culture or our minds may be telling us about ourselves - we are neither as utterly magnificent nor as horribly wretched as we may feel.

What’s the quote by William Shakespeare?

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

- Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2

Yet, what lies at the center of this punishing binary of good and bad thinking? How do we get off the pendulum swing between our feelings of shame and grandiosity, particularly as artists who must navigate the often extreme ups and downs of creative life?

One answer may be found in our worthiness.

Last week, in SpringSessions - a creative coaching cohort I lead for artists and creatives - we took a deep dive into the topic of Creative Worth.

We explored worthiness as a lived and living principle - a felt sense we must return to and that demands practice, and an inner knowing at the ready - if only we can slow down and get quiet enough to feel into it —

• How do we recover and maintain a healthy, ongoing sense of self-worth as human beings?

• And, how do we relate to our creative practices as inherently worthy?

  

  The culture at large does a number on most humans, and particularly artists when it comes to our sense of worthiness. In general, humans are socialized to measure self-worth through these primary criteria:

• Appearance (How we look/outward appearance — and I include here, age, health, and able-bodied-ness)

• Material Worth (Our financial worth, wealth, access to resources)

• Social Worth (Our social circles, who we know, our networks, and their status/connections)

• Career Value (What we do for a living and the status of that role or work in society)

• Achievement (Determined by social standards of success)

Our self-worth is often contingent on the status of these five criteria aka how we’re doing on the social scale of Appearance, Material or Social Worth, Career and Achievement, and while the dominant culture dictates these categories and upholds their power, as Shakespeare says, our thinking also plays its part in making it so…

This is the double-wound we inflict on ourselves as human beings and artists. Not only do we experience a boost or blow as we move up or down the scale of social value, but our thinking around what that movement means about us on an identity level deals the second boost or blow to our ego.

So, “If I have XYZ, then I have value”; “If I succeed at XYZ, then I will feel more valuable and worthy”; And, “Without XYZ or if I fail at ABC, then my value reduces. I lose regard in the eyes of others and my feeling of worth lessens”.

While much of this may not be news to anyone reading - these are the basics of self-esteem and of living in a late-stage capitalist society with often narrow, externally dictated standards of value - I want to highlight the particular impact of this system on artists.

For creatives, in particular, we can experience uncertainty both in procuring professional opportunities to practice one’s art - and in controlling the timing of and how much one receives for one’s work. An artist’s creative status might change many times throughout a yearly cycle, so there can be feelings of feast or famine. Artists are accustomed to receiving a high level of input - standards around talent, the perceived quality and viability of one’s work — and its relevance — are often determined by factors outside our control. Artists must also build a tolerance for feedback from within their fields, from peers, agents, audiences, and artistic tastemakers or gatekeepers.

Over time, these factors can erode an artist’s sense of autonomy, integrity, authenticity, and the inherent worthiness of one’s creative self and work. Another phenomenon I see, specifically in relationship to artists, is that the artists’s sense of self gets entangled with their art (specifically in terms of how they feel like they are doing as an artist or how their art is “doing”). Artists can become co-dependent with their art. This enmeshment makes sense as the lines between art and life are so beautifully fluid, and as art is a passion pursuit and a way of life as much as a career. It can become challenging to imagine one’s self without the moniker of Artist, or one’s life without Art.

In this way, a grounded, deeply held sense of self-worth is vital to ensuring that the artist establishes healthy separation from and perspective about their creative path and work when necessary.

How do we protect and nurture this sacred space of wholeness and integrity in ourselves (our worthiness) when up against so much that threatens to pull us away from our creative center?

Let’s take a detour into the world of angsty teenagers for some clues! “Teenager-dom” is a prime period in life through which to look at self-worth as this is the era when our sense of self begins to get tested, and where self-esteem either builds or erodes.

Child jumping in a puddle on the sidewalk.

We can see how young children often struggle less in this arena - their value or worth is not questioned to the same degree, and their sense of self-worth is certainly not as contingent upon the social criteria mentioned above. Children are generally more drawn to and connected to what they love, value or find pleasure in with less external filter. Even if the child may be picking up values through their family or the larger culture on a subtle level, and beginning to sense how they may or may not fit the dominant social criteria around worth, the child still maintains a primary connection to their pleasure drives and an innate sense of their value.

As for the teen years, we don’t need to have seen an 80’s rom-com or teen angst movie by John Hughes to recognize the stereotype of the self-conscious teen looking to their peers for self-validation and affirmation (loser), or the grandiose jock or prom queen setting themselves above the pack (popular).

Likely, we each carry parts like this within - a part that is prone toward comparison and driven to conformity as an early coping strategy and in some cases, as a matter of survival, and/or a part that overreaches in the other direction to keep us safe, superior and in power. These now-present parts may hold a direct line to the pain of exile, the shame of difference, or the need for self-aggrandizement that was activated during this tender and vulnerable time of life.

The iconic teens from A Breakfast Club sit on a railing in the school library.

A psychological study examined core contributors to self-esteem, particularly for teens. Its authors/researchers set out a series of recommendations for counteracting the erosion of self, and supporting teens in re-establishing and bolstering healthy self-worth.

I took these recommendations and ran with them - developing the ideas from this (and related studies), and bringing in my personal, creative, and transformational coaching lens(es) so we might apply these principles directly to our creative realities, and our work as artists.

Who knew that a psychological study on low self-esteem in teens could provide such a beautiful and powerful framework, and a clear set of tools, to bolster the artist’s sense of Creative Worth and to support their sense of resiliency and perseverance?!

Want to dive deeper?

We’ll look at the three primary supports (like a tripod or the base of a cheerleader’s pyramid!) that humans need for a healthy sense of self-worth and we’ll employ them as creative tools to enhance our creative work, and worth, as artists.