I was inspired by a recent TikTok trend on former art students sharing stories of their positive or negative interactions with their teachers. I immediately remembered a moment I had during my time as a grad student at Parsons School of Design.

Failure is natural, and yet I see so many of my peers stall their lives by doing anything to avoid it. This unfortunately means that taking risks is not a part of who they are. This does not mean that they are slacking, it means that the fear of failure has outweighed their dreams of personal growth.

There are times when I struggle to get myself in the state of flow, what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes as ‘a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.’ So I need to take a step back and take on some things that get me back in to the flow of the creative work that I love doing.

These are some of the things I do to boost my creative mind:

Rejection is hard. Especially with the hours spent putting in the work to achieve that goal. I spent my whole youth in fear of not landing a spot on a sports team, play, or musical. All of which resulted in a mix of disappointment, tears, and acceptance of the opportunities that I did land.

I have taken public speaking classes in high school, college, and gave presentations twice a week throughout grad school, yet I still hadn’t hit my stride. Then a couple years ago, a friend told me about his experience taking an improv class.