What the Heck Does a Dissertation on International Water Treaties Have to Do With Creative Identity?

Do you feel like a real creative or artist, or are you just trying to be one?

The other day I opened my dissertation file for the first time in three years. I haven’t looked at it since 2018! When I was done with it, I was done. And because I had decided not to continue on in academia, I haven’t had to think about it since. My dissertation was about international water politics, but believe it or not, it actually informs the work I do in my creative business. Before I get into that, though, here’s the title of my dissertation. Take a deep breath before you read this.

Treaties as Endogenous to State Interest: Politicization and Securitization of International Water Treaties in Bilateral Riparian Relationships.

LOL. Yeah, it’s a mouthful, and I’m sure you’re wondering how the heck that informs my current work. The subject matter doesn’t, but its theoretical underpinnings do. What I was really studying was how identity determines behavior and constitutes our subjective realities. The thread of commonality that runs through all my work, including my fiction, is this: that perception, and particularly how we perceive ourselves, creates our realities. In my dissertation research, I looked at how state identity plays out in international political conflict over water. In my current research on creativity, I’m interested in how changing our perspective even just a little can make us feel more creatively fulfilled, and thus constitute a creatively fulfilling life.

This is why when I work with clients, I focus first on how they see themselves vis-à-vis their creativity and their creative practice. I ask them: Do you see yourself as a artist/writer/musician/creative? Do you identify as a creative or artist, or is your creative work something you are just attempting? For example, if writing is your thing, do you feel like a writer, or are you just “trying” to be a writer (be honest)? Without fail, my clients always say they feel they don’t quite have the right to call themselves a creative or a writer or an artist or whatever it is they’re “trying” to be. Usually it’s because they haven’t had “success” with their art (exposure, money, etc.). Often it’s also because they don’t feel they’re doing enough – “real” artists spend more time on their creative work, are more dedicated, are recognized as real artists by their peers.

All these feelings are based on a certain perspective that it is other people who get to decide what you are worth, what the value of your work is, and who you are. Once other people decide they want to buy your work, you’ll be a real artist. Once other people see your success, you’ll finally be able to stop saying you’re “trying” to be an artist. You’ll have arrived.

Except, if you live your life from within this perspective, you’ll never arrive. Not really. Because the truth is, other people simply don’t have the power to determine who we are, no matter how much we want them to. No praise will ever be enough, no amount of money. You know this is true. It’s not that praise and money don’t matter – they do! But that stuff isn’t ever going to give you the feeling of being settled in yourself, living the life you’re meant to, living your purpose.

You know what will? Taking back your sovereignty over yourself. You decide who and what you are. And once you realize that you have absolute authority over your own identity, you understand that all those extrinsic measures of worth are arbitrary, constructed out of the human mind and burnished with a sheen that is supposed to look like truth. But it’s no more true than anything else. You’re not a real artist unless you make money off your work? Says who? Exactly. Only other humans who have no more right than you to decide that’s true. Or to put that another way, you have just as much right as anyone else to decide things about yourself and your work.

Do you want to know what makes you a real artist? Here’s the big secret. It’s so simple yet so profoundly life-altering when you begin to see it clearly. You’re a real artist if you feel like one. That is your truth: your feeling about yourself and your work. And here’s how you start getting that feeling. By deciding that you are already what you want to be. You’re already an artist, a writer, a musician, a creative. You have a right to decide that! And you don’t have to base it on any “evidence.” What will make it true is that you feel it’s true. I know that sounds very uncomfortable. Things aren’t true just because we decide they are! Well, sure, this isn’t going to work in many cases, nor should we believe that all truth is arbitrary. Obviously. But in this case, when it comes to your own creative identity, you can decide what your truth is.

Step into that identity, claim it as your own, wear it proudly, and your actions and behaviors will start to follow on that and constitute that reality in the world. I should know, after all I did a dissertation on this process! And I went through this process myself when I decided I’d had enough of feeling depressed about not fulfilling my creative potential. So take that first step, and say it out loud to the universe: I am a creative (artist, musician, writer…).