Do you think of your Self as sculpture?
Here's the link between thinking of oneself as a sculptor and crafting a better Self.
When talking about crafting a creative identity as part of your Self, one way to better understand is to think of the Self as a sculpture.
In this 2017 paper, Valverde, Sovet, and Lubart present the analogy of Self as sculpture. They model this as a mental process that happens throughout our lives… constantly adding, understanding, modifying, and removing parts of our Self.
- Some people spend a lot of time sculpting their Self. Others are less deliberate or engaged.
- Some copy aspects of the Self they see in others. We might call these role models.
- Some may look to guidelines offered by the various actors in our lives; friends, family, institutions, and so on
The authors point out that everyone crafts a unique Self to some degree, but many people may arrive at very similar self-concepts.
So what does this mean for sculpting a creative self?
One answer might be that actively engaging in the sculpture of your creative self increases the chances that your Self will be highly unique. And that unique Self comes through in everything you create.
But that’s just one answer. What do you think?
Reference
de Valverde, J., Sovet, L., & Lubart, T. (2017). Self-construction and creative “life design”. In M. Karwowski & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The creative self: Effect of beliefs, self-efficacy, mindset, and identity (pp. 99–115). Elsevier Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-809790-8.00006-6
