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ATC : Fundamentals of Creativity 

Week 1 : Fear Inventory

Fear Inventory Concept:

  Fear Inventory; a practice of writing down your fears for the purpose of practicing letting them go.

  When letting them go; the experience is of having less/no filters that get in the way of experiencing the moment and what is true IN the moment. 

  The benefit is that the next right step often becomes clear, and easier to take. This is especially useful when in our creative process we may become lost or derailed from the next right step in a project. This may take the form of a block, or a feeling of boredom/dullness, or even confusion. 

  The fact is that as artists, our creativity is connected to our willingness and ability to feel. Fear tends to employ a variety of behaviors to help us avoid feeling past hurtful situations, or to avoid putting ourselves in situations that may hurt us. What ends up happening is that fear begins to run our lives, and how we act. 

  The act of creating is a vulnerable one; at it's best it expresses a feeling/emotion that was difficult for the artist to feel and/or that they were moved by. The impact of the work  created is directly related to the artist's willingness to feel that emotion, and then transmit it through their medium of choice. The audience then has the opportunity to feel that emotion through the work of art. 

  Unfortunately, as Brene Brown has said; we as humans cannot selectively numb emotion. So if we have any place in our lives that we are numbing some undesired emotions, that action then begin to numb out our ability to feel in general, and then our ability to create. 

  Fear Inventory therefore is a practice that you will need to apply to other parts of your life, not just being an artist, or connecting to creativity. We often think that art and being an artist is seperate from the rest of our life, when in fact, it is intristically connected to our well being as a human being. 

Vocabulary:

Desire: a strong FEELING of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.

Fear: an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm.

Physiologically speaking; in times of fear, chemicals are released in our brain that make it extra hard to think, and come up with new thoughts. It's far harder to build new neural pathways, and Gamma waves, which are new and original ideas. 

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