Creativity is like polishing a hypnotic diamond covered with shit.

Stick with me.

Lets say you are drawing a picture. Or writing an article. Or designing a product.

At first its shit. Like if you were showing it to someone, and they were comparing it to... a good commercially-viable creative work then of course its shit. Everything starts out as shit.

But as you are cleaning and polishing, you start to see it... a tiny, beautiful little diamond. You like this diamond. You worked hard for this diamond. This diamond is pretty cool.

As you continue to clean and polish, you notice that the diamond is getting bigger and more beautiful. Wow! This is looking pretty good. Nice going!

But what you don’t know... well what you don’t know... is that the diamond is hypnotic. It is hypnotizing you. It is hypnotizing you to not see the shit.

You decide to show it to someone.

It doesn’t go well.

Perhaps the person is polite, perhaps they are not. It doesn’t matter. If your empathetic enough (and most creatives are) you know that they did not like your creation. This hurts. This hurts a lot.

You created that diamond. And now the feedback is negative.

A couple things to remember here:

For most people this is the end of their creative career. Seriously. This phenomenon has destroyed the creative bent of millions of people.

But for the brave, hard headed, or perhaps just stupid, this is the beginning. They were hypnotized to a point where there is no turning back. They keep polishing that diamond. Day in and day out.

The problem is that the hypnotizing effect is strong. Very strong. You will not see the shit! You will stop improving because you don’t see the problems with your work. The diamond will stop growing. You will keep polishing the clean parts of the diamond and completely miss the obvious nasty shit that needs to get cleaned up!

This is why feedback is required. You have to show people your diamond. You have to face the critics. You have to face others and say:

You have to take the criticism. Be bold. Take the hits. Learn to not take it personally. This is the path of a truly great creative.

This is where a mentor, teacher, or just good friend is most needed. They can say where the shit is! And they can do it in a more tolerable fashion. If you find someone who can play this role well, never let them go.

Do this over and over. Show your work to someone. Find the hidden shit. Wipe it clean. Polish. Repeat. Show your work to someone. Find the hidden shit. Wipe it clean. Polish. Do this enough and suddenly… well suddenly… other people stop seeing the shit! You are creating recognizably good creative products.

You can create diamonds! Your work is awesome! Your work is Perf… wait what is that.

Oh oh oh sweet summer child… in the hard process of learning… In having to continuously spot shit and wipe it clean. You have become quite good at finding shit. So good, that you have unlocked the ability to see a new frontier of shit!

Now when you share your creative works to others, you get applause! You get admiration! Everyone sees the diamond! But not you. Not you. You only see the microscopic shit that still needs cleaning.

A creatives work is never done.

This article is building off of a metaphor that I originally found presented by Struthless. For the life of me I cannot find the original video?! Not sure why. Either way he has an awesome YouTube channel. Check him out here!