Accepting what drives you. Balancing that with health.

Issue #271 of the Better Humans Daily. Subscribe here for inspiration and knowledge. [Tony Stubblebine](coachtony?source=email-c7f27b30bfea-1660129891966-newsletter.subscribeToProfile-7038e003d060------------------------ec164a7b_f555_4c28_8cd1_c5d907b72c11--------de6e5ad096a9)[Tony Stubblebine](coachtony?source=email-c7f27b30bfea-1660129891966-newsletter.subscribeToProfile-7038e003d060------------------------ec164a7b_f555_4c28_8cd1_c5d907b72c11--------de6e5ad096a9) in [Better Humans](   ∙  4 min read   ∙  [View on Medium]( [Post image] Accepting what drives you. Balancing that with health. Issue #271 of the Better Humans Daily. [Subscribe here]( for inspiration and knowledge. ··· [James Cham]( asked me about my favorite Medium pieces, “I’d be interested in the ones that you thought represented the potential of the [Medium] platform the most.” I have one answer at least. This is the article I’ve recommended to friends most often in the last two months: [Creativity and Mental Health: How to Train Your Daimon](. I didn’t pay attention to this article until I saw the author framing it for someone else. He is a Hollywood guy who had worked with a lot of creatives whose lives ended too young. This was his framing: he knows from first-hand observation how giving in to your creative impulse leads to ruin and how stifling your creative impulse also leads to ruin. Pressure is inseparable from the creative process… It has been my experience that most artists interpret that process as psychic and/or emotional pain, rather than the natural process of pressure building-up until creative energy bursts forward, and the much-beloved high of “the flow” is found in which the work is largely made. I recommended this article to an entrepreneur who was taking a break. I know their break will end because they need to work. Their creative impulse is too strong to stay retired. But maybe the next time they start working, they can find a healthier balance. I recommended this article to myself. In my job switch, I stepped away from my own idea, with good reason, and am executing another person’s creative vision. This is currently extremely analytical work. No shade on the work at all — it’s intellectually satisfying. But I also know that I am a creative and eventually that will break through. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to the end of my understanding of the current vision soon and I’ll have no choice but to be creative. I’m recommending this article to you all as well to think about what drives you. Are you fighting that drive or working with it? This is an area where perfectionism fails. Your drive has to be balanced with health and relationships and being a full adult human being. But there is no way to get the balance perfectly right because being right requires predicting the future. So instead you have to surf. For me, surfing means first accepting my drives. They are who I am and I don’t need to be someone else, even if that someone else is theoretically a healthier person. I want to create things and those things don’t need to be practical. The drive to see one of my ideas realized can be very intense. It’s not healthy to stifle them. But then those drives have to come with balance. I took a day off recently. I have a lot of work right now, but I still spent the evening hanging pictures with Sarah. Etc. Life is an art, not a science. I would categorize this as similar to a concept that I’ve shared in the past: healthy self-entitlement. I like that phrase because I mostly run into people who are under-entitled. That means they’d be healthier if they lived with more acceptance of their needs. But obviously, unhealthy self-entitlement is also a thing. I’m not giving the green light to embrace alcoholism here. I just think most readers are much more likely to be in the camp of needing to practice more healthy self-entitlement. ··· Now, I’ll get to the more direct answer to James’ question about why this article represents the potential of Medium. The author of this article is sharing a perspective that is interesting, insightful, and rare to hear. He’s a former studio executive, but the size of that role isn’t what makes it interesting. It’s the applicability of his experience. I’d put this [article about the supply chain crisis](ryan79z28/im-a-twenty-year-truck-driver-i-will-tell-you-why-america-s-shipping-crisis-will-not-end-bbe0ebac6a91?source=email-c7f27b30bfea-1660129891966-newsletter.subscribeToProfile-------------------------ec164a7b_f555_4c28_8cd1_c5d907b72c11--------de6e5ad096a9) written by a truck driver in the same category. They are both great perspectives. These authors deserve the lion’s share of credit. But the role of Medium here is that it was easy for them to publish — probably the easiest option. Also important, they didn’t need to have an audience already. Medium’s network found these articles and boosted them. This pattern is finding and boosting articles from “a person with expertise who is too busy expanding that expertise to invest in building an audience.” That is one of the unique potentials of Medium. [Reply to this story](mailto:tony+newsletter@tonystubblebine.com?subject=Re: Accepting what drives you. Balancing that with health.)[View story]( Sent to {EMAIL} by Tony Stubblebine on Medium [Unsubscribe]( from this writer’s Medium emails Medium, 548 Market St, PMB 42061, San Francisco, CA 94104[Careers]( Center]( Policy]( of service](