Are There Poisonous People In Your Life?
Suss Out Your Saboteurs (Comedy Mindhacks #24)
There’s a particular kind of friend that Julia Cameron warns about in her book The Artist’s Way, a specific type of saboteur she calls a “poisonous playmate.” My guess is, you might know some folks like this. These people aren’t your enemies or the keyboard critics hiding out in the comment section of your YouTube channel. Nope! Think again!
These are often the people who are closest to you. They’re the ones who’ve sat with you in the silence of tough times, laughed with you on late-night drives or calls, and maybe even shared in your earliest dreams. And yet, when your creativity began to bloom, when you began to shine, when growth started happening something shifted. The air thickened and they started to feel threatened by you.
Cameron describes these poisonous playmates, which I’m just going to refer to as “poisonous people,” as individuals whose own creativity is now blocked. Like you, they may have once dreamed big, too. They may have even called themselves artists or comedians at some point as they worked beside you, but somewhere along the line, they made peace with blockage. Oddly enough, instead of confronting it head on, they found a way to romanticize it. (Sounds weird doesn’t it?! That’s why I started that sentence with “Oddly enough”!) Again, do you know anyone like this?
They’re the types who, rather than doing the thing, they find comfort in the identity of being an “unrecognized genius,” someone living through the struggle, someone stuck in the loop of bitterness or martyrdom. And so, here you come, committedly chipping away at your dream, consistently setting time aside for your art, intentionally carving out time for yourself, and suddenly they can’t handle it. Here’s why: your progress exposes their paralysis. Or: your freedom reminds them of their captivity. And, of course, that doesn’t usually sit well.
Most of the time, these poisonous playmates/people won’t come at you directly. Nah, they like to deal in micro-darts. They question your shift in schedule. They interrogate what you’re doing with your time. They make jokes about how “self-involved” and “self-centered” you’ve become. They subtly, but very consistently, try to awaken or reawaken doubts within you. They make you ask yourself: Is this good enough? Am I good enough? Am I really being selfish? Is this even worth doing? They want the old version of you back for and to themselves.
It’s all such a warped way of relating. They want the pal who stayed up late dissecting other people’s work instead of doing something themselves. Why? Because that version of you was safer. It was more familiar. It was less threatening. It had less fear involved. That’s why Cameron insists: safeguard your inner artist. You have to protect your creative life like it’s a newborn.
One way to do this is to keep your work to yourself until it’s ready. Don’t show off your first draft of jokes. Don’t send along your premises or open mic clips. Basically, don’t open your art or your heart to someone who hasn’t yet earned the right to see it. And certainly don’t let someone else’s passive discomfort become your emotional project. Their emotions aren’t your responsibility!
Instead, prioritize “self-nurturance.” (I love the way that phrase sounds! Stop right now and say it out loud: “self-nurturance.” Ah!) Be still. Be quiet. Keep creating. Why? Because work is sacred. It’s a holy invitation from our Creator to do a tiny bit of what he’s done. And here’s the thing: eventually, if you stay the course, you may become something of a bridge. You might inspire others to do the same thing in their lives just because they saw you taking steps forward.
That’s a great paradox of creative boundaries. By protecting your process in the short term, you actually end up modeling creative freedom for others in the long term. Not everyone will follow, of course. Some will cling to their resentment like a badge. They love it. But some? Some will see you, and begin to remember themselves.
So, hear me loud and clear here, my friends: not everyone deserves access to your inner artist. Few do. And that’s okay. Ultimately, you shouldn’t be doing this for applause anyway. You should be doing it because there’s something inside you that longs to be alive. Because, whereas poisonous people long to destroy, those who are “alive” long to create.