Last week I looked at two quotes from Liz Gilbert’s book, Big Magic. Now I’m looking at a third quote and definitely my favourite one!
“We all have a bit of trickster in us, and we all have a bit of martyr in us, but at some point in your creative journey you will have to make a decision about which camp you wish to belong to, and therefore which part of yourself to nourish, cultivate, and bring into being. Choose carefully. […]
Martyr energy is dark, solemn, macho, hierarchical, fundamentalist, austere, unforgiving, and profoundly rigid.
Trickster energy is light, sly, transgender, transgressive, animist, seditious, primal, and endlessly shape-shifting.” (p. 222)
As I was reading this passage, I was totally impressed. It probably was, for me, the most powerful idea in the whole book. And it’s not new, it is just explained in a novel way, perhaps a more powerful and playful way than just calling it mindset, for instance…
Creative Person: Gilbert says that we can choose the way we approach a task; any task. There’s the way of the martyr, harder and hardened, and the way of the trickster, light, and playful. You, like me, probably realise now that you have been playing both roles with various projects you undertook, and sometimes you might have played both roles with similar tasks, which is quite intriguing. You might ask why or how is this possible? The fact that it is possible only reinforces the idea that the way we do things is, indeed, a choice.
Coach: How does one choose to be a martyr or a trickster?
a) The first of the frames of NLP discusses choice, the choice of being at the cause of things, thus taking responsibility and creating or generating the results around, as opposed to being on the effect side, thus believing things are happening to them and therefore the results are outside of their control. The martyr has the characteristics of someone who things happen to, someone who is a victim rather than a fighter, someone who accepts and doesn’t challenge. The trickster on the other hand, works with whatever there is and changes the currecnt situation into anything that makes things work for him; his attitude is playful and light. The martyr is rigid in his way, the trickster is shape-shifting, adaptable.
b) When approaching a creative project, the martyr’s mindset is one filled with Limiting Beliefs & Limiting Decisions: “Life is pain / Nobody will ever understand me / Valuable art is created from pain” etc. While the martyr carries these beliefs through their creative journey, the trickster approaches the same creative process lightly, positively and confidently. – Read more about Limiting Beliefs & Limiting Decisions in my section on Coaching.
c) Reading Gilbert’s paragraphs, with alternating sentences about the martyr and the trickster, I felt the words gave me some food for thought on my own attitude towards the projects I am currently working on. You, like me, can look at the Internal Representations you hold for your projects, what feelings, states and behaviours do they generate? Are they suitable for a martyr or for a trickster? What should change and how, in order for you to be more of a trickster in whatever you undertake?
In Big Magic, Gilbert dedicated a few pages to this
