What I Wish All Creative People Knew About Their Brains

Have you ever had an experience like this? One morning, you send a text message to a friend about your evening plans, and when you don’t get a reply, you think: She’s just busy. At lunchtime, you wonder if something might be wrong, so you send another message — ”Hey, are we still hanging out tonight?” — but no answer. Hours later, you start to imagine that something terrible happened to her… or maybe you get mad: She’s always acting like this! She doesn’t really value me. Suddenly, you hear a ping! and it turns out your friend accidentally left her phone at home and didn’t see your message until she got back from work.

What was your brain doing? Why did your thoughts turn to disaster? Several well-respected psychologists have investigated this aspect of human behavior, among them Daniel Kahneman (the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow), and Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman, who coined the term negativity bias in 2001. But the explanation I like best comes from Dr. Rick Hanson, Senior Fellow of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, who describes it from an evolutionary perspective*:

“Our ancestors had to make a critical decision many times a day: approach a reward or avoid a hazard — pursue a carrot or duck a stick. Both are important. Imagine being a hominid in Africa a million years ago, living in a small band. To pass on your genes, you’ve got to find food, have sex, and cooperate with others: these are big carrots in the Serengeti. Additionally, you’ve got to hide from predators, steer clear of trouble, and not let other hunter-gatherer bands kill you: these are significant sticks. But here’s the key difference between carrots and sticks. If you miss out on a carrot today, you’ll have a chance at more carrots tomorrow. But if you fail to avoid a stick today – WHAP! – no more carrots forever. Compared to carrots, sticks usually have more urgency and impact.

Negative stimuli produce more neural activity than do equally intense positive ones. They are also perceived more easily and quickly. For example, people can identify angry faces faster than happy ones; even if they are shown these images so quickly (just a tenth of a second or so) that they cannot have any conscious recognition of them, the brain will still get activated by the angry faces. The alarm bell of your brain — the amygdala — uses many of its neurons to look for bad news: it’s primed to go negative in most people. Once it sounds the alarm, negative events and experiences get quickly stored in memory — in contrast to positive events and experiences, which are not prioritized in the same way.”

In other words, there’s a part of the brain that’s always on the lookout for danger. We’re wired to swiftly diagnose our present condition based on our perception of past events. And the brain rapidly forms conclusions because they can help us prepare for what's next — except those conclusions are often shaped by the negativity bias. As a result, when we are faced with uncertainty, our anxious brains naturally create conclusions that sound like:
I’ve been down this road before
Everyone else has it together, there must be something wrong with me
I can just tell that they don’t respect me.

Why does this matter to artists? Because the amygdala (the “alarm bell of the brain”) is very active when we are faced with uncertainty — and to create their work, artists have to make decision after decision after decision: Cerulean or Prussian blue? Major or minor key? Is this idea a short story or a novel? What will happen if I send an email to that curator?

When uncertainty arises, the brain swiftly forms conclusions that are biased toward the negative, and a supposedly simple choice — for example, whether to apply for a grant — might bring up thoughts like:
There’s so much going on, I don’t even know where to start
Why bother? When you reach a certain age, you become invisible
This work came together quickly and I'm sure no one is going to like it.

It’s natural to experience these thoughts. They’re so intrinsically part of being human that about 2000 years ago the Buddhists started calling them “Monkey Mind” — a perfect image for that aspect of the mind that’s always chattering at us as it swings from doubt to worry and back to doubt again! Monkey Mind’s job is to keep you from moving forward, because to the anxious brain, stasis = safety. It’s important to recognize that experiencing these thoughts doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your idea or your goal, or that you’re not up for doing it. In fact, Monkey Mind is often a sign that you’re on the right track, that you’re right at the edge of some important growth.

You may have seen the popular advice to “silence your inner critic,” as though you can just turn this part of your brain off. That’s not possible (and if you removed your amygdala you wouldn’t be able to sense actual danger, and thus you wouldn’t be alive for very long). Attempting to silence Monkey Mind only makes these thoughts stronger because in effect you’re still focused on the negative.

Here’s how to deal with Monkey Mind: First, acknowledge these thoughts. Your sweet brain is just trying to keep you safe from danger! I have a mentor who gently pats the side of her head and says, “I hear you, honey.” It’s silly, but it works! Let your brain know that you’re listening, and you’re okay. Then, shift your attention to a conclusion that interests you; in the case of the residency application, this might be something like, “I’m willing to be curious, and see what happens.” You might find it helpful to write this conclusion on a piece of paper and keep it in front of you, to remind you of what you find more important. Then, take one small step toward your goal.

The negativity bias and Monkey Mind thoughts will always be with us; they’re just part of being human. But life gets a little easier when we approach our creative work with some compassion for our anxious brains.

*Abridged for length. You can read the entire article at https://rickhanson.com/how-your-brain-makes-you-easily-intimidated/.