Interoception’s Influence on Creativity, Pt III
First: If you want to nerd out on creativity and interoception, or have an interest in how our physiology and nervous system interact with how, when, why and what we create, read the first and second part. I wrote them over two years ago, but hey, I needed to marinate.
When I was writing the first draft of my book on creativity, I decided to sort of … ‘tag’ each of the 15 chapters’ concepts, as well as the 100+ exercises in the book that help loosen up creativity. I ended up with 28 words or phrases. These 28 tags corresponded generally to the qualities or states of mind I was trying to elicit.
When I read through my list compared to this list of eight, I realized I could actually superimpose every single one of my tags (except ‘creativity’ or ‘creative thinking’ itself) with these eight words. Holy shit.
Like:
Noticing = Insights, Reminders, Checklists
Not-distracting = Discipline, Preparation, Not-happiness
Not-worrying = Perfect is the opposite of good, Playfulness, Ability to be wrong, Joy, Not-perfection, Hopefulness
Attention regulation = Preferences, Ratings, Essentials, Critical Thinking
Emotional awareness = Self-awareness, Sequential
Self-regulation = Discipline, Responsibility, Baby Steps, Break It Down
Body listening = Patterns, Self-acceptance, Themes, Boundaries
Body trusting = Truth, Confirmation
Perceive, Appraise and Use
So, if I’m on to something here, creativity is directly related to interoception in that we ‘perceive, appraise and use’ signals like noticing, attention regulation, body listening and trusting, and not-worrying. For me, creativity is about being open enough to waste time looking for the first spark. Most everyone on Earth has the capacity for creativity; it’s the elongating of time and need for patience and order that trips many of us up.
Physiological interoception is all about self-awareness, which means we’re paying attention to our internal signals. After working with hundreds of writers, creative folk, businesspeople, students, etc, I started realizing creativity was about self-awareness, as well. In fact, you might say that creativity is all about being able to ‘perceive, appraise and use’ signals to get insight, solve problems, think differently, or get a new perspective.
So try it now. Pay attention to your heart beat. Without feeling your pulse, use interoception: how many beats per minute is it? It doesn’t matter if you’re correct or not. But that muscle you used to focus that hard? That’s your creativity muscle.