How does fear motivate your subtlest creative choices?
In observing my students do the sound mixing for Les Misérables, I reflected today on the most significant fear for any sound board operator: feedback. This is a foundational fear, and one that is a real risk, especially with as large a sound design as this.
But the problem is that letting this fear control their decisions led to an equally risky decision: too timid a mix. The show might start off too quiet, because that is preferable, for the fear, to feedback.
Making the right decisions means acting out of insight and reason, not out of fear. And by recognizing and naming the fear of feedback, my students were much better able to make the best choices for their work.
Fear can motivate my writing, it can motivate my conducting and leadership choices, it can motivate my parenting and teaching. And when I know what the fears are, consciously, their motivating power decreases.