The art of self-expression

Part 4: Surrendering to your game

This piece is part four of Work & Self-Expression, a series that explores our relationship with work, creativity, and the in between.

• Part 1: Introducing work & self-expression

• Part 2: Who we are without work

• Part 3: Some practical thoughts on diversifying our identity

• Part 4: The art of self-expression

• Part 5: How to sabbatical

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Early on in my career, I never gave creativity or self-expression much thought. I viewed creativity as the work of artists, subscribing to a narrow definition of art. Art was the paintings that hung in galleries, the stories that sat on bookshelves, and the sculptures that lined museums. Self-expression was reserved for the minds and hearts of those who created art, not people who worked in finance and tech — no, we thought in numbers, slide decks, and product requirement documents.

Within the walls of corporations, the name of the game is buy in and alignment. Initial ideas may emerge from the depths of our imagination as pearls of self-expression, but as those ideas make their way towards commercialization, they lose their creative shape. Consequently, when we rely on our mission-aligned jobs to serve as the sole vehicle for actualizing our purpose (read: expression), we find ourselves unfulfilled and longing for more because true self-expression cannot flourish in the face of consensus and external stakeholders. It’s an inside job that defies boundaries and convention, not meant to be locked up in a single avenue of our lives.

pursuing self-expression

Self-expression comes in many forms. In its simplest form, it's the way we lead our lives: how we choose to spend our time, the books we choose to read, the food we fuel our bodies with, the company we choose to keep. In its highest form, it's our innate ability to ground the ephemeral in reality by creating something out of nothing — a piece of writing, a house project, an itinerary.

The truth is we're all creators. Like an artist breathing life into a painting by drawing inspiration from her reality, our expression is drawn from the sum total of our thoughts, feelings, experiences, past and present — an act that brings us closer to our selves.

As with any craft, we must continually cultivate and nurture our self-expression. When we’re young, we begin as blank canvases, filled with unbridled wonder and captivated by our own worlds. If we're lucky, we're encouraged to go out and explore the world beyond ourselves. In our adolescent years, we begin to form our sense of self, creating stories and constructing worldviews to make sense of who we are and how we fit. We develop beliefs and preferences that guide our acts of individuality: the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, the friends we make. Along the way, we begin to look to our outer world for validation and a sense of belonging. The expectations of those around us filter through us and we adopt their narratives as our own.

This constant tension of belonging to our selves and belonging to others is put to the test when we join the workforce. As we ascend the ladder, seeking increased responsibility and promotions, we place trust in others to judge our contributions and allow them to determine our fate. If we fail to develop a grounded sense of self, we run the risk of buying into paradigms that threaten to stifle our originality. We may unwittingly trade our individuality in exchange for validation from people we believe to hold the answers in the form of seniority, getting swept up by the games they play.

Life's a series of games. We're all playing one game or another whether we’ve explicitly opted into them or not. To self express is to awaken to our power to change the rules of the game and free ourself from the societal expectations that nudge us towards a victory of conformity. We can choose to move through life as a pawn, following the rules that others have put into place, or reconstruct the board with an end game that favors us harnessing our truest expression.

a call to adventure: harnessing our truest expression

In a world where we’re anchored to productivity and maximizing output, it’s easy to gravitate to spending our time working on tasks that offer us a fleeting sense of accomplishment, but lack an outlet for self-expression. When we give priority to the things that keep us in our comfort zone and mute our expression, we’re doing ourselves and others a disservice by holding ourselves back from accessing flow and normalizing disconnection. To embrace our originality is to bestow the gift of permission upon ourselves and those around us.

The world needs your voice. Speak your truth, even if your voice shakes.
— Maggie Kuhn

When we view our expression as a vehicle for self-discovery rather than a path towards external validation, it frees us from the fear of judgment and nudges us towards messy action to begin somewhere, anywhere. The more experiments we run, the more we learn about ourselves, the more time we have to get creative with the process and do things that feel like an extension of us.

Only by fully embodying our individuality can we come to understand the full range of who we are and venture to the farthest edges of ourselves. By allowing all of ourself to march to the rhythm of our own drum, we’re providing others with a reference point for how to cultivate their own beat and sparking a culture of agency.

The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.
— Robert Henri

As with making art, the object isn’t merely just to self express. It’s about getting into the wonderful state which makes self-expression inevitable, welcoming every moment as an opportunity to be in alignment with our beliefs and values. When we summon the courage to bet on ourselves and walk towards action, we create conditions fertile for harnessing self-expression. It’s tapping into your true essence. It’s giving yourself the grace to be cringe and look foolish. It’s finding your confidence in the learning curve. It’s playing your game regardless of who is watching.

Up next: How to sabbatical

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