Douglas Eby on the Inner Dynamics of Creative Visionaries
Douglas Eby of Talent Development Resources at www.TalentDevelop.com and its associated sites, like www.TheInnerActor.com and www.TheInnerEntrepreneur.com, has been researching and writing about psychology and creativity for the last 10 years, and regularly publishes intriguing tidbits about creativity, personality, and more.
I connected with Douglas’s work originally through my interest in highly sensitive people and his site www.HighlySensitive.org.
In the past he was a film journalist and wrote film production articles for Cinefantastique magazine, interviewing numerous actors, writers, and other filmmakers, which helped further his interest in the inner dynamics of creative people, along with his graduate school education in psychology.
Characteristics of Creative Visionaries
Eby describes creative visionaries as people who have a drive, passion, persistence, or consuming commitment to realize their creative ideas. As visionaries, they have a sense of their work being so important, meaningful, and emotionally powerful that they are willing to commit to it and persist with it.
For example, filmmaker James Cameron originally conceived his movie Avatar in the 1970s and finally released it after 4 years in production this year.
He notes that this kind of persistence can be seen as a form of obsession. 
Common Challenges & Obstacles
Eby notes the following challenges and obstacles often come up for creative visionaries:
- Mental Health Issues often come up for creative types. Writers often struggle with mood disorders. Creative work doesn’t provide immunity to those feelings, and in fact they seem to be more prevalent with creatives.
- Perfectionism. Creatives often have a burning need to make everything “right.” On the other hand, as Eby notes, James Cameron says, “I’m not a perfectionist, I’m a ‘greatist.’ I just want to make it great.” (Personally, I love that!)
- Self Esteem. The dichotomy of feeling entitled and much more talented, creative, and visionary than most people, but simultaneously feeling less than or inadequate (so common for creative types) can wreck havoc with one’s self-esteem.
- Fraud & Impostor Feelings. Many creatives feel like frauds or impostors, as if they will be found out as not really being talented. Actors Kate Winslet and Nicole Kidman both talk about such feelings.
How to Overcome These Obstacles
You may be helped by these common ways creative visionaries overcome these obstacles:
- Receiving Therapy. Many actors and writers talk about therapy and how it has helped them. Actor Heather Graham feels that she creates better characters as a result of her personal work. Self awareness seems to increase creative quality for those who pursue it.
- Going Ahead with Your Creative Work Anyway. James Cameron admits to feeling depressed at times and yet going ahead with his work. This is so true for me — as an Enneagram Four who often bumps into feeling down at times, I can’t wait around to be “in the mood” to create.
- Seeing Your Work in Larger Terms. James Cameron again is an example of someone with a powerful vision who has a larger perspective on the work he brings to the world. This is one of the keys to making an impact with your creative project or vision.
How to Sustain & Fuel Your Creativity
Eby notes that many creatives are helped by collaboration, if that works for you and is appropriate to your creative process. James Cameron, for instance, hires the most creative people he can find, which helps him keep his ideas active and sharp, and emotions high. Solitary artists like painters and writers may have to fuel themselves in a different way.
Similarly, Eby recommends going with the flow of your creative work — not resisting it — as a way to sustain and fuel your creativity.
On Dealing with Naysayers, Fears, & Doubts
Eby suggests that creative visionaries become conscious of their doubts and fears and how they might get triggered by other people’s doubts and fears. He advises that we question and examine the underlying beliefs and ideas around the messages we receive from others.
Ask, “How true is that?” For example, a common admonishment to artists is that “you can’t make money doing art.” But how true is that really? Are there people out there making money with their creative efforts? (The answer is a resounding yes! in my opinion.)
What Supports Creative Visionaries to Succeed?
To help stay the course as a creative visionary, follow your gut. If you feel driven, called to, or have to take action on creating your creative dream, despite all the fears, doubts, and reasons not to, follow your gut to claim and step into your role as a creative visionary.
Also, pay attention to your emotional life and what holds you back from your creative spirit, expression, and interests. Therapy, coaching, or mentoring may be helpful. Deal with the fear and anxiety you have so you can get on with your creative work. Coaching in particular can provide a sense of responsibility for bringing your creative project to life.
The full audio interview will be posted soon.
Creative Visionary Survey Results
The results are in!
A few weeks ago I posted a survey about Visionaries and received wonderful feedback. There were 299 responses.
Here’s the note I sent out with the survey: “If you consider yourself a creative visionary, a leader, a world-transformer, or even someone with a passion for making the world a better place, I’d love to have your input.”
1. What type of visionary are you?
Over 60% of you see yourselves as “Creative Visionaries” followed closely by over 57% who see yourselves as “Spiritual Visionaries.” Since I sent my survey to my list of “highly sensitive souls,” I’m not entirely surprised by the spiritual focus.
Granted that I’ve been focusing on “creative visionaries,” I’m sure my results are skewed in that direction, but nonetheless, I’m interested in this response.
(Note: Click on the graphics for a larger view.)
2. Which of these characteristics best describe you?
Then, I asked you to respond with the characteristics you feel best describe you as a visionary, and heard that most of you think of yourselves as “Creative, Outside-The-Box Thinkers” (over 58%), followed closely by “Big Picture Thinkers” (54%), “Transformers of Old Outdated Systems & Paradigms / Challengers of the Status Quo” (52%), and “Thought-Leaders/Forward Thinkers” (51%).
Lots of thinking going on here, which is particularly interesting in the context of the next question.
3. Which of these challenges have you struggled with?
Clearly the biggest issue was “Struggling With My Own Inner Critic” — over 70% of you selected that choice.
“Feeling Isolated and Alone” and “Not Having a Peer Group” were also top choices, as well as “Having Too Many Ideas and Not Knowing Where to Start” and “Not Having a Clear Vision But Knowing I’m Meant to Be Doing Something Big.”
My sense is that much of the struggle with the inner critic and the many ideas have to do with getting stuck in our own thinking, not keeping our energy moving, and not being disciplined about choosing ideas to bring to fruition.
Other comments on this question included
- “Not having good energy boundaries”
- “Fear of jealousy”
- “Needing a kick in the butt”
- “The idea that creative work, such as writing poetry, is selfish. Also, nobody likes a showoff.”
- “Impatience and disbelief that others could not see what I could see”
- “Not being taken seriously, ‘heard’”
- “I find myself staying weighted down with ‘I don’t have the right to be heard and noticed’”
- “Doing what I want vs should causes mental anguish”
- “Organizing life to write and making it a priority”
Thank you very much for your participation.
Your comments are welcome — what intrigues YOU about this? What do YOU notice?
New Creative Visionaries Survey
I’d love to have your input on my new survey for creative visionaries. I’m striving to discover what helps creative visionary types succeed and stay on track with what they were put here to do. As part of that effort, I’m looking for information about what kinds of specific obstacles they face. If you’d be willing to share your input, I’d be eternally grateful.
You can find the survey here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/creativevisionaries
I’ll be sharing the results of the survey here on the blog. You’re also welcome to post comments, ideas, and suggestions.
Happy Holidays!
What Defines a Creative Visionary?
I’m adding more thoughts on how I’m defining “creative visionaries.”
Although there are many types of visionaries, it’s my supposition that ALL visionaries are “creative” thinkers. In other words, they are ahead of their time and thinking outside-the-box.
Creative visionaries are:
- pioneers
- people who aspire to greatness
- people who change the course of history
- change agents
- radical visionaries
- creative outside-the-box thinkers
- muses
- creative thought leaders
- forward thinkers
- magicians
- transformation entrepreneurs
- people who transform old outdated systems, paradigms, and radically challenge the status quo
- prophets
- innovators
- “imagineers”
- big picture thinkers
- idea generators
Being Ahead Of Your Time
I just finished a brilliant interview with Mark Simpson of www.BriaSimpson.com.
Mark is teamed up with his wife, Bria Simpson, a six-figure marketing mentor, and he uses his creative visionary abilities to help entrepreneurs develop their own successful creative visions for their businesses. In the past, Mark designed, owned, and ran a children’s museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Along those lines, he cites Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss as two of the most successful, creative visionaries of our time. I couldn’t agree more.
Mark shared with me a favorite quote of his by Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) that helps keep him inspired and on track, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
Here’s a bit of what I gleaned from Mark about how successful creative visionaries thrive:
- Be willing to take risks.
- Trust your own instincts.
- Have a deeply rooted support system firmly in place of people who believe in you.
- Channel your creative visions into real and tangible outcomes.
- Stay inspired by staying tapped into your big picture vision — remember all the lives you will or are touching.
- Keep your distance from the people who doubt you.
- The only person to please is yourself.
- Be willing to take a leap of faith (or many).
- Be willing “fail” and learn from your mistakes.
- Stay focused on your big picture vision.
- Don’t get caught up in the day-to-day minutia. Instead, delegate and surround yourself with people who have strengths in those areas.
- Have people around you who believe in you and ways to stay connected in the world socially. That helps balance the isolation that can come from having a vision that other people may not “get.”
Here are some characteristics of creative visionaries we touched on.
- Out there
- Ahead of their time
- Ahead of the curve
- Standing out
- Misunderstood
- Hard to find
- At the cutting edge
- Avant garde
- Big picture thinkers
- Idea generators
I’ll post the interview later today.
Imagineers Don’t Shoot Down Their Dreamse
One of my platinum coaches just forwarded me this article about “Imagineering” (R) by Ali Brown called, “Learn From Disney and Make Your Business Dreams Come to Life!”
Ali says, “…in Imagineering, it’s important to take things one step at a time. Otherwise, you might shoot down your dream before you have the chance to make it happen.”
This is such an important lesson that so many of us overlook.
We can’t possibly be in — let alone stay in — the creative resourceful space we need to inhabit to “dream big” and connect with our own inner vision and guidance.
Once we’ve given ourselves a chance to brainstorm and daydream, THEN we can do the “reality check” and find a way to make our visions real. But before then, all we’re doing is shooting down our nascent brilliance before we even give ourselves a chance to discover it.
Amazing, Innovative Art
Just saw this on Twitter via @Kaypearl from @bitrebels.
The detail is amazing, and I love all the “round pegs” and “rebel” references. Click the links below the image to see the full image and to click through to the artist’s gallery.
Wow.
What Inspires Me About Creative Visionaries
Part of what inspired me to explore this new project was this article about Brad Bird at Pixar. I loved the “lessons,” including:
(Note, these are renumbered from the original article because there were actually 10, not 9, as indicated in the text)
- Herd Your Black Sheep: “Give us the black sheep. I want artists who are frustrated. I want the ones who have another way of doing things that nobody’s listening to. Give us all the guys who are probably headed out the door.”
- Perfect is the Enemy of Innovation: “…there are some [scenes] that only need to be good enough to not break the spell.”
- Look for Intensity: “Involved people make for better innovation”
- Innovation Doesn’t happen in a Vacuum: “…if we can interconnect all our strengths, we are collectively the greatest animator on earth.”
- High Morale Makes Creativity Cheap: “…the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale.”
- Don’t Try To “Protect your success:” “The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved…”
- Steve Jobs Says ‘Interaction = Innovation:’ “People are allowed to create whatever front to their office they want…. if you have a loose, free kind of atmosphere, it helps creativity.”
- Encourage Inter-disciplinary Learning: “…encourages people to learn outside of their areas, which makes them more complete [and more creative].”
- Get Rid of Weak Links: “Passive-aggressive people—people who don’t show their colors in the group but then get behind the scenes and peck away—are poisonous.”
- Making $$ Can’t Be Your Focus: “Walt Disney’s mantra was, ‘I don’t make movies to make money—I make money to make movies.’”
What I love about these thoughts is the outside-the-box thinking that focuses on creativity, results, risk, and morale, simultaneously. As someone who is accustomed to coaching clients who “don’t fit in,” I love seeing such powerful results coming from NOT fitting in and not valuing fitting in. It’s so refreshing.
It’s my sense that we all have a lot to learn from these creative visionary types who see things differently, are willing to say so, and are willing to match their money and their efforts with their beliefs.
The Search Is On
I’m starting this new blog to get started on a new project to understand what inspires and supports creative visionaries to stay on track with what they were put here to do, in the face of what must often be incredible pressure to conform and let go of their radical ideas.
I’m defining creative visionaries (so far) as:
- Creative geniuses
- Imagination-based entrepreneurs
- Thought-leaders
- Cutting edge designers
- Technological innovators
Here are the questions I’m asking so far:
- What kind of legacy does a creative visionary long to leave?
- What does a creative visionary do when they get off track or lose their way?What causes them to lose their way? How do they get back on track?
- What is a creative visionary’s life purpose? Do they have a sense of it? How does it guide their actions?
- What does a long dark night of the soul look like for an imagination entrepreneur and visionary?
- What challenges does a creative visionary have and how do they overcome them?
- What kinds of non-supportive labels have creative visionaries struggled with over the course of their lives?
- How do visionaries deal with the doubts and fears of the people around them about the visions they hold?
- What kinds of obstacles have they faced and overcome to get to where they are now?
Here are a few of the creative visionaries I’ve thought of so far:
- George Lucas
- Steven Spielberg
- Steve Jobs
- John Lasseter
- Peter Jackson
- Carly Fiorina
I’d love to interview some of them — and other similar types — to begin to answer these questions to understand what enables their success.
I’d love to hear your suggestions and thoughts.
