Scatter the pieces

Your Essence Is Your Greatest Creative Advantage

SHS – Human First | Susan Ndinga Wright

What do teachers of the arts always tell those who are performing?

Whether you’re learning to sing, dance, act, paint, write, or express yourself through any other creative discipline, there’s something that eventually becomes fundamental to the development of your craft.

Bring yourself into it.

Yes, learn the technique. Learn the movements. Learn the structure. Understand the rules, the history, the discipline, and everything that has allowed that particular art to exist before you.

But then?

Add yourself.

Add your personality. Your story. Your experiences. Your emotions. Your perspective. Your humour. Your pain. Your curiosity. Your way of understanding the world.

Add your beingness.

Because what’s the point of learning how to express something if, in the process, you forget to express yourself?

And I’ve personally tested this.

There is something extraordinarily fulfilling about creating from your own essence rather than constantly trying to reproduce someone else’s.

It’s probably one of the rawest ways of experiencing art.

Because when you create from who you are, you’re no longer simply performing a craft.

You’re giving your existence a form of expression.

And this is where I believe something rather interesting happens.

Your personality becomes your signature.

Your experiences become your material.

Your perspective becomes your differentiation.

Your identity becomes something that nobody else can reproduce in precisely the same way.

Someone might learn your technique. Someone might imitate your movements, your writing, your voice, your presentation, or even your aesthetic.

But they cannot become the entirety of what made you create it.

Because they haven’t lived your existence.

And this is why I believe that holding on to your own style, personality, and identity is possibly the fastest transport towards your own success, ascension, climax, or whatever destination the conversation happens to be about.

Not because being yourself automatically guarantees success.

But because you’re no longer spending your entire creative existence trying to become someone who already exists.

Think about how much energy that saves.

How much creative capacity becomes available when you stop filtering everything through the question of whether someone else would have done it differently.

Of course they would have.

They’re someone else.

And that’s precisely the point.

Imagine if every artist spent their entire life perfecting the ability to reproduce another artist.

Who would create what hasn’t been created yet?

Who would introduce the movements we haven’t seen, the sounds we haven’t heard, the stories we haven’t considered, or the perspectives that might completely transform how we understand something?

The evolution of art depends on the existence of differences.

And those differences begin with the individual.

Which brings me to something I’ve come to appreciate more and more through my own creative journey.

Your identity isn’t something you have to overcome to master your craft. It’s something you can bring into the mastery of it.

Technique provides the language.

Practice develops the fluency.

Experience expands the vocabulary.

But your essence?

Your essence gives you something to say.

And perhaps that’s why creating from yourself can feel so fulfilling.

Because you’re not just producing something for the world to experience.

You’re experiencing yourself through what you produce.

You’re discovering aspects of your own being that might never have found expression had you continued trying to fit someone else’s interpretation of what your art was supposed to look like.

And the beauty is that this doesn’t have to stop with what we traditionally recognise as art.

Why shouldn’t someone bring their own essence into business?

Into leadership?

Into education?

Into invention?

Into governance?

Into the way they build relationships, solve problems, design systems, or contribute to society?

Why should personality be celebrated on a stage but suppressed in an office?

Why should individuality be considered an artistic advantage but treated as something to manage everywhere else?

Perhaps we’ve been separating creativity from the rest of human existence when creativity has been present in everything we’ve ever built.

And perhaps one of the greatest things we can teach someone is not simply how to become exceptionally good at something.

But how to become exceptionally good at doing it as themselves.

Because mastery doesn’t have to mean losing your individuality.

It can mean becoming increasingly capable of expressing it.

And if there’s one thing that my own journey has taught me, it’s that the more I allow my personality, experiences, consciousness, and beingness to enter my creations, the more fulfilling the act of creating becomes.

I don’t have to become another artist to create art.

I don’t have to become another thinker to develop a thought.

I don’t have to become another leader to explore leadership.

I can study them. I can learn from them. I can appreciate what they’ve contributed.

And then I can contribute what is mine.

Because the world has already experienced them.

It hasn’t yet experienced everything that I can become.

And the same applies to you.

So learn your craft.

Practise it.

Master it.

But whatever you do, don’t forget to bring yourself along.

Because your greatest creation might not simply be what you produce.

It might be the person you become by allowing yourself to create as you are.

SHS – Human First
Susan Ndinga Wright