The Creative Act - The Book Every Entrepreneur Needs to Read

I have an incredible book recommendation for you.

Saturday morning I stumbled across a quote that came from a book called "The Creative Act: A Way of Being." I had never heard of it, but I was immediately intrigued both by the book's title and the quote I had read. 

I looked it up and discovered it was written by legendary Music Producer, Rick Rubin. I don't know why, but it kind of took me by surprise. I bought the audiobook on Audible and began listening. I was hooked at the quote in the epigraph. 

Within 24 hours of purchasing the book, and listening to a few powerful chapters twice, I am almost done with my first listen through. There will definitely be a third and forth full listen, as this book is jam packed with powerful 🤯🤯🤯AH-HAS and is beautifully resonant. Each read or listen offering new themes and impactful connections.

At it's core, he is really speaking about the creative process as spiritual practice. There is no separation between being human and being a creator. To be human is to be a creator. The real question is "Do I respond to the calling?"

The ideas he presents are not new. There are plenty of other authors that espouse similar concepts. The difference is he expresses it from his unique point of view. And he encourages this in others. 

There are parallels to ideas Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about in her book Big Magic, in Shakti Gawain's book Creative Visualization, Julia Cameron's book the Artists Way, Pat Allen's books Art is a Spiritual Path and Art is a Way of Knowing. 

What I really love about this book as how he makes reference to the habits, worldviews and perspectives essential to all creative processes including entrepreneurship. He provides a frame from which to view the process - not the product - as the most essential and valuable ingredient to living creatively.

Rubin celebrates and encourages:

• playfulness; 
  
• cultivating and maintaining a beginners mind; 
  
• not attaching to the outcome, but rather committing to experimentation; 
  
• cultivating a practice of deepening one's awareness;
  
• developing structures and routines conducive to maximize the flow state; 
  
• checking and reframing cognitive distortions;
  
• embracing distraction - not avoidance- as part and parcel to the creative process; 
  
• listening to one's intuition and inner guidance over the "rational ideas" offered by others; 
  
• acquainting oneself with examples of creative excellence to calibrate oneself to it; 
  
• cultivating a growth mindset;
• not letting the vision of your creation take over or impede the actual manifestation of it; 
• not allowing perfectionistic ideals impede our creative expression; 
• and other ideas which hold obvious resonance with the work we do as expressive arts therapists. 

The take-aways offered in Rubin's work are pure GOLD! 

One of my favorite passages in the book comes from the chapter on Habits: "Create an environment where you are free to express, what you are a afraid to express."

This is absolutely essential to creating a successful private practice because in the creation of it we will be forced to confront a great many fears. 

No matter your modality, I think you, too, will appreciate The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin.