The Danger of Safety

Why comfort is your creativity’s worst enemy

As a creative, you are vulnerable. There is no hiding. Unfortunately, creating things always involves other people. Creativity has nothing to enlighten when kept in isolation. So whenever you create something, other people will have a response. An opinion. Critique.

You set things in motion, and often people will resist. This is inherent to being a creative — regardless of whether you’re a writer, a designer, a musician or a calligrapher. You are here to create new things, not to replicate what others have already done. Seldom are new things welcomed with open arms.

Strongmen have days on which they can’t lift as much.

Pressure

So sometimes, we collapse under the pressure. The pressure of another day filled with risks. Another day of defending your choices. Another day of trying to come up with something new, only to find out that it has already been done before — in a way.

And when we collapse, when we’re at our weakest, we look for safety. Safety in the form of a less bold idea. Safety in the shape of something familiar. Safety in a tool that we’re more comfortable with — but which also significantly lowers our chances of creating something refreshing.

We tell ourselves that the safe route is actually the wisest path to go down. That the client will not like your bold ideas. That the target audience probably can’t relate to your visions. That blue and gray are probably the best colors to use, no matter how predictable.

It’s okay. Strongmen have days on which they can’t lift as much. Teachers have moments when their explanations stutter. Stay-at-home-dads sometimes drop their toddlers’ straw cup. Shit happens, and we must not beat ourselves up over it.

Comfort

However, we shouldn’t get comfortable making safe choices. Every time you go for the safe route, you slowly devalue yourself as a creative. An occasional mixup can happen. Does it become a pattern, however, each safe choice becomes a nail in your creativity’s coffin.

It’s the comfortable shade of safety in which creatives perish.

Avoid risks and vulnerability too often, and you’ll end up as one of those people with a portfolio full of work, but void of character. A portfolio that looks just like the search results for “logo” or “identity” on iStock or another such website.

Because in the end, being a creative is exactly the opposite of going for safety: people admire (and hire you) because you’re someone who tries new things. Someone who dares to take not one, but many risks, putting yourself out there, time after time again. As a respected creative, your work is a near-tangible manifestation of failure, rejection, getting up again, and brushing yourself off.

It’s the comfortable shade of safety in which creatives perish, and it’s at the very edge of danger where their true colors become radaint.