For the last month or so I’ve been playing around with an audacious idea. Could I design a video game? 

New tools are becoming available like Everywhere and Skybox AI that mean it’s not quite the pipe dream it might have been a few years ago. Although it’s still by no means a straightforward endeavor.

Unsurprisingly I’m noticing the voices of the inner critic and self doubt sprouting up. “Who do you think you are?” “Who gave you permission to do this?” “You’re too old, game design is for college students sleeping under their desks,” etc. etc. etc.

These are familiar voices that pipe up in an indignant huff every time I try something creative. But something feels different this time. Their voices are a bit muffled. A bit distant. Easier to tune out. 

I think I’ve developed a creativity callus. 

When we do hard physical labor it hurts at first. There is friction, pressure and irritation. But our bodies have a brilliant response. If we keep doing the same hard thing over and over our skin produces a callus. We literally get a thicker skin precisely in the spot where we need it.  

For example, if you want to play guitar for any length of time, calluses are necessary. One article says that "the continuous pressing down on the strings is like torture if you don’t have calluses to protect you.” (For some reason I needed a reminder that we need protection when we do hard things.)

Importantly, if you stop playing, the calluses will go away within a month or so and you’ll have to build them up all over again. This is why finding a consistent creative practice is so important.

I think so many of us end up in this cycle where we want to do something creative. We dive in. It’s hard. We stop. We wait a while. We feel stagnant. We crave creativity and we try it again. Try. Pain. Quit. Wait. Crave. Repeat. Quitting before the calluses form means we’re stuck like Sisyphus in a constant cycle of pain and pressure. 

For me, this is a whole new way of thinking about creativity and resistance. In general I value inclusivity and resonate with schools of thought that focus on health as wholeness. Jung tells us to integrate the shadow. Internal family systems helps us welcome home the exiled parts. Systemic psychotherapy shows us that many painful symptoms can be traced back to excluding people and the health of the system is restored when we make space for everyone. 

But there is a limit to inclusivity. 

It reminds me of something Oprah said. Her only regret from 20 years of doing the Oprah Show was when she did an episode with white supremacists. She thought that by opening a dialogue she might get them to change their minds or at the least expose their ignorance. But in the end she felt like she just legitimised their point of view by giving them a platform and the dignity of debate. 

I’m increasingly convinced that if we try to reason with our inner critic it just gives it more power. It feeds on our attention.

Fairy tales and myths also point to this wisdom. A classic fairy tale on this theme is Bluebeard. Two elder sisters reject the advances of a wealthy man with a strange blue beard, but the youngest sister accepts. He gives her free rein to explore his castle as long as she does not enter one forbidden room. When her husband goes away on business, she opens the door to find a pile of dead bodies of all his ex-wives. With help she removes Bluebeard, leaving him to be dismembered by carrion birds (there are many versions of this tale, some with different endings. I refer to the one told by Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Women who Run with the Wolves). 

In her commentary, Clarissa Pinkola Estes notes that Bluebeard represents the archetype of the Predator who cannot be rehabilitated. But rather than try to fight or punish the predator, she counsels it is wiser to contain it.

“Like a person who must be in an asylum, but a decent place with trees and sky and proper. Nourishment, and perhaps music to soothe, but not banished to a back ward in the psyche to be tortured and reviled...when we refuse to entertain the predator, its strength is extracted and it is unable to act without us."

It also reminds me of the iconic moment in the Odyssey when Odysseus must pass by the Sirens. To even listen to their song means certain death. So his men put beeswax in their ears and keep rowing. But Odysseus wants to listen to the Sirens' song. So he has his men tie him to the mast so he can’t steer the ship off course no matter how much he wants to. This myth tells us we absolutely need to tune out certain predatory voices, like the inner critic. Or, if we want to listen to them, our commitment to our creativity must be sufficiently strong that we will not waver. 

A callus is our body's way of tuning out the pain. Strategic, almost surgically precise, desensitization.

So we need to make peace with the fact that a certain amount of discomfort is simply part of the creative process. When we encounter self-doubt (or fear of failure/judgement, etc.), it is not a stop sign. Rather, the only cure is to keep going. And keep going. And keep going. And trust that you will develop a creativity callus. The siren song of self-doubt may never cease completely, but at least you can tune it out enough to stay the course regardless and continue on the adventure of reclaiming your creativity.