INFP and a Sensitive Creative? Why Authenticity might be More Important than Originality.

I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book on the creative process, Big Magic, yesterday and something she wrote stood out to me as talking to me directly as an INFP. Sparks shot up in her writing when she discussed how we hold ourselves back as sensitive creatives, how we confuse what creativity really means.  

The book is like a shaking-up of all the used, rusted beliefs that we might be carrying as creative people. It asks us to lighten up. It talks about how “creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred.” It tells us that “what we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all.” It tells us to lighten up and to ride the magical steed of creativity, to surrender to its will, to understand that starting a conversation with our creativity has no guarantees except the full aliveness it brings to our lives. 

Gilbert tells us her own unique perspective on that age-old struggle of the artiste: feeling that he or she is just making the same things that have always been made. This is also a common dilemma for the INFP creative person. 

“Maybe you fear that you are not original enough. Maybe that’s the problem–you’re worried that your ideas are commonplace and pedestrian, and therefore unworthy of creation. Aspiring writers will often tell me, “I have an idea, but I’m afraid it’s already been done.” 

She goes on to say: “Well, yes, it probably has already been done. Most things have already been done–but they have not yet been done by you. By the time Shakespeare was finished with his run on life, he’d pretty much covered every story line there is, but that hasn’t stopped nearly five centuries of writers from exploring the same story lines all over again. (And remember, many of those stories were already cliches long before even Shakespeare got his hands on them.) When Picasso saw the ancient cave paintings at Lascaux, he reportedly said, “We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years”–which is probably true, but so what?” 

I remember reading this quote by Picasso a long time back, and at that time it had struck me as sad and as if there was nothing left in the world to do. I was a child then who had barely started a conversation with her creativity, and something in the quote had shut me down. Over the years, I think I have often made this excuse to stop myself from wading in the mud to get to the lotus. 

Yes, everything has been done before. Most things, in countless fields, have been done already. But what does that mean if you are a creative person?

Elizabeth gives us her answer to this dilemma, shaking us up as INFPs and sensitive creatives, saying “So what if it has been done before?”

“So what if we repeat the same themes? So what if we circle around the same ideas, again and again, generation after generation? So what if every new generation feels the same urges and asks the same questions that human beings have been feeling and asking for years? We’re all related, after all, so there’s going to be some repetition of creative instinct. Everything reminds us of something. But once you put your own expression and passion behind an idea, that idea becomes yours.” 

She goes on to say that authenticity impresses her much more than originality as she gets older. That’s something for all INFPs like us to remember: 

“Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me. Just say what you want to say, then, and say it with all your heart. Share whatever you are driven to share. If it’s authentic enough, believe me–it will feel original.”  

How I am finding that nurturing my inner child as an INFP is not silly, it is life-affirming.

So, if you want to make something, she says, make it. If you want to try your hand at something new, whether it is creative with a capital C or a creative expression that feeds the rest of your life, do it. Maybe you want to do something silly or something that others might consider silly.  A silly thing I did some months ago was buy an adult coloring book and color away. Someone I know made an off-hand comment about it when I shared it with them. Although I continued coloring after that for some time, something in me seemed to curl up after this disinterest and I loosened my grip on this creative, playful activity.  

I dropped coloring. I abandoned it. It looked silly.

But the truth is, it was far from silly. It was one of the most heart-nourishing activities I have ever done. In the months before this, my heart had felt curdled. I think it was the creative child in me that was out of sorts. It had checked out. But with the coloring book, I had tools that this little creative child inside me could play with. It delighted in the choosing of the colors. It knew there was nothing to achieve, just an engagement with what was blooming on the page. My mind slowed down. In fact, it retreated to the back and stopped its incessant chatter almost as soon as I started coloring. It felt meditative. 

For those few weeks, I had a tool to drop down from my mind into my heart. And yet, I gave it up for some time because of a look. 

We give up such important things because someone else doesn’t understand. But I have picked up my coloring book again and colored in my lovely mandalas. I have found something that nourishes my being. It bypasses my mind and goes to my essence, the artiste who loves to play with colors, who likes making lines on the page, who feels like this little task is stringing up the pieces of disjointed time and making it flow smoothly again. 

Why would I give up something that makes me feel alive? Why would you? If you are an INFP struggling with your creative process, try playful, try silly. I think it is our play that propels us, helps us create something more. 

What do you think? Does this resonate with you as an INFP or a sensitive creative?   

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