Creative Tension

These days most people try to avoid anything to do with tension.  But creative tension can be a good kind of tension to have.  

Creative tension comes out of the gap between your dream becoming reality and where you are right now. 

Imagine starting to stretch an elastic band between your two hands. One hand is your dream. The other hand is where you are currently. 

As you stretch the elastic band you feel a pull between your hands. That pull is acting in two directions.  It is acting to pull where you are right now towards your dream. That is a productive place to be. It is creative tension.

As you embrace being in that place, you will find creative solutions emerging in response to the tension, often in the form of 'aha' moments when you least expect them. People who practice creativity will frequently set 'stretch' goals to keep themselves engaged and productive. 

The tension is also acting to pull your dream towards where you are currently.  That tension is not productive. It will result in a dream that drifts lower and lower.  And as your dream drifts lower there is a tendency for where you are right now to also drift lower, even further away from your dream. 

You need to be careful because this drift may happen so gradually that you do not notice it. Regularly reflecting on your dream and the underlying personal vision and core values is one way to keep in a place of creative tension rather than drifting.

The good news is, the more tension there is between your dream and where you are right now, the more opportunity there is for creative strategies to emerge, as long as you resolve to not compromise on your dream...

Another way to create tension