Life Without Envy: Ego Management for Creative People

by Camille DeAngelis

“Every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation,”

we imprison ourselves in our minds. We enumerate our failures, sulking inside our heads like toddlers who didn’t get their way. We take ourselves and our “problems” so seriously.

a problem becomes a problem when you label it as such.

The simple act of observing the voice proves that you are not the source of it.

Compared to your distant ancestors, you may as well be an earl in an English manor house—so genteel that human emotions need never be discussed, let alone felt. You ride purebred horses down the country back lanes, passing rainy afternoons in your library of thousands of leather-bound first editions. You use words like “ascot” and “aperitif” without irony or humor.

your ego? He’s the servant who simpers out of fear for his position, managing to convince you that you are incapable of fixing your own sandwich. He riles you up with that panicky feeling of can’t-get-along-without-it, take-it-or-someone-else-will even though you no longer need that instinct to survive.

Why don’t you want to be happy?, slices to the very heart of how the ego functions.

you’ve got to train yourself not to believe what your ego tells you about who you are, what you’re capable of, and what you “deserve.” Your sanity is at stake.

Misapprehension #1: My thoughts are entirely my own. The way I think about the world, and my place in it, is completely unique to me.

Educational historians laud Horace Mann as the champion of free public schooling to help children grow into educated voters, but there is a dark side to this system:

Mann advocated for an orderly society at the expense of the individual. His educational vision implied that the “common” child—one not born into privilege—should learn to follow rules and directions rather than inventing his own,

in a traditional school environment, conformity is valued over innovation.

Artists have their own carnival of bullshit to contend with,

we shouldn’t identify with the trappings.

go and sit in a very quiet place where no one can possibly interrupt you. Ask yourself, “How much of this is actually mine?”

Don’t let anyone tell you, ever, that this is a zero-sum game. Your genius does not threaten me. It delights and inspires me. —SEANAN McGUIRE

Misapprehension #2: We are isolated and competitive individuals, forever jostling with strangers for a seat on the bus at the end of a long day.

Let’s reflect for a moment on the parameters of your identity, shall we? Your name. Your face. Your parents. Your ethnicity. Your socioeconomic background. Your abilities and disabilities. You didn’t choose any of this, though, did you?

It brings me a continual sense of peace to think of myself as a sweet little blob of temporary personhood. What if we all really do come out of a cosmic Play-Doh container? What if we’re all made of the same stuff molded into different shapes?

“Since there is nothing other than me, of what am I afraid?” Then his fear vanished, for of what could he have been afraid?

psychologist Eric Maisel calls “necessary arrogance”—no art ever comes into being without the artist’s belief that she has a worthwhile contribution to make—but don’t let your ego talk you into taking that contribution too seriously.

When you subscribe to the theory of oneness, you feel buoyed by other people’s good fortune and success instead of threatened or diminished by it.

Best of all, when good things happen to you, you get to share your joy instead of hoarding it—which is, of course, a self-enhancing cycle: your attitude and emotions giving you ever more reason to feel what you’re already feeling.

Why do we want so badly to prove our brilliance at a more tender age than everyone else? Why, in our secret (or not-so-secret) hearts, do we want to be perceived as better than everyone else?

the scarcity mentality, which has haunted our species from that African savannah all the way to the Walmart Black Friday stampede.

We all want to be loved and accepted for who we are, and because our art feels like the truest expression of that identity, it’s all too tempting to conflate output with intrinsic worth.

1. Getting a book, film, or record deal does NOT make you a better artist. (Indeed, it does not make you any more of an artist than you were before.) 2. Getting a book, film, or record deal does NOT make you a better person.

For me, it’s very simple: it’s not about wealth and fame and power. It’s about how many shining eyes I have around me.”

He has nothing to prove; he’s only offering the best that is in him, a trove of abundance that goes on accumulating with every passing year.

you are worthy of love and esteem regardless of what you paint or fail to paint, what you write or never get around to writing, what you share or what you keep to yourself. If you believe you need to earn love and esteem, you can strive and suffer for approval but what you receive will not actually be love. You have to trust in your own right to be here before anyone else can agree with you.

If Leonardo had been preoccupied with painting a Last Supper scene that would “last through the ages,” he wouldn’t have experimented with that weird mixture of oil and tempera on dry plaster. But he took that risk, got on with it, and made something the monks of Santa Maria delle Grazie would appreciate every time they sat down to eat.

The concepts of “greatness” and “mediocrity” are pernicious fantasies. Eradicate these words from your mind as if they were a virus, because in a sense, they are.

When we talk about wanting to be “great,” we implicitly set ourselves above others. We see ourselves as chosen where others are not. And is there anything remotely honorable about narcissism?

mediocrity is a habit rather than a life sentence.

This work of art is not “yours.” You don’t own it. It doesn’t belong to you. You are not the origin of this work.

“manifesting the awesome.” Good ideas don’t originate in my brain—they come through me. I write them down and eventually share them. I no longer try to possess them. I no longer identify with them.

For a little while I get to be reabsorbed into the beautiful thing I came out of, the beautiful thing that made me.

when you release your claim to the work, you’ll see how it frees you to embrace whatever’s coming next.

so why not give of the best that’s in you, and move on?

We believe there is strength in going without, that we’re worth more if we’ve come from nothing, that there’s something inherently noble about laboring in obscurity. The myth of the starving artist is a crock of shit, and yet we always come back for seconds.

You must follow the path that opens to you and you must never stop. And it will demand that you shed your skin, over and over and over again. Your skin must be shed for that skin is not the skin of a writer; it is the skin of whatever you were before. —STEPHEN HARROD BUHNER

As Sarah Lewis writes in The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, surrender means giving over, not giving up.

“Envy is often a clue that there’s something latent in you that needs to be expressed.” The onus is on you, my friend.

Face your ugly feelings. Write them in your journal, exorcise them with a trusted friend

scrawl them on your bathroom mirror with that lipstick you never use. Now you know why you saved it.

If you keep wanting what someone else has, you can’t grow into everything you could be.

When you hinge your perception of success or failure on how your work is received, you create your own misery.

you must take responsibility for your own creative life. No one is victimizing you. No one is denying you your rightful glory.

Indeed, this has nothing to do with anyone else at all, and everything to do with you.

I may be “white” and middle class but I don’t have to be arrogant and presumptuous on top of it—