[Throughout the first half of 2026, I hope to provide you with a robust picture of how existential wellness coaches work with their clients on fundamental existential issues. If you’d like to learn more about the Noble-Manhattan Existential Wellness Coaching Certificate Program that I’ve developed, please visit here. There are scholarships available and all of the resources of the Noble Manhattan family. Come take a look. Today’s offering is Part 3 of a mini-series on the weight of individuality. Enjoy!]
What about self-identified creatives and their particular relationship to individuality?
You’ll likely see many such clients: clients who self-identify as creative and who struggle either with asserting their individuality, retaining their individuality, or dealing with the consequences of manifesting their individuality.
It is a creative person’s individuality that defines them. Most people are conventional and prize conformity; creatives tend to prize their individuality. Even if they train themselves to hold their tongue, individuals will already know as a young child that they can’t conform and that they weren’t built to conform.
Looking around, unable to understand why people are acting so conventionally, starting to feel alienated, out of place, and like a “stranger in a strange land,” they find themselves burdened by this pulsing energy: the fierce need to be themselves. This need produces lifelong emotional, practical and existential consequences.
If you are born individual and find yourself presented with some arbitrary, odd-sounding rule—that you can only play with one of your toys at a time or that God will be offended if you don’t wear a hat—you will immediately ask, “Why?” If the answer makes no sense to you or if you get your ears boxed, you will cry “No!” and begin to grow oppositional.
A certain oppositional attitude naturally and inevitably flows from an individual’s adamant effort to reject humbug and to make personal sense of the world. What does this feel like, emotionally? It feels like a combination of sorrow and anger, tangled together to form a root ball of despair.
This oppositional attitude, perhaps suppressed in childhood, begins to announce itself and assert itself in adolescence and to grow as an individual’s interactions with the conventional world increase. It grows as their ability to “do their own thing” is directly or indirectly restricted by the machinery of society. They find themselves in an odd kind of fight, not necessarily with any particular person or group of people but with everyone and everything meant to constrain them and reduce them to a cipher. They find themselves in a fight to the death, a fight to retain their individuality.
One proof that this dynamic actually takes place is the frequency with which we see it in the lives of creative people. Arnold Ludwig, in his study of “1000 extraordinary men and women” called The Price of Greatness, explained: “These individuals often have an attitude set that is oppositional in nature. These are not people who just see that the emperor has no clothes; they offer their own brand of attire for him to wear. When dominant ideologies challenge reason, they feel obliged to speak out, do what they believe is right, and pursue their own goals, even when they may be punished for doing so.”
Popping out of the womb individual, needing to experiment and to risk as part of their individuality, and feeling thwarted and frustrated by the oh-so-conventional universe into which they have been plopped at birth, the world’s individuals rush headlong like a ski jumper down a ramp toward reckless ways of dealing with their feelings of alienation and frustration. They are not only individual, they are driven to be individual, a drive that sets them apart and sends them racing through life.
More next week!
[I hope that you’re enjoying this series. Please check out the Noble Manhattan Existential Wellness Coach Certificate Program and my latest books, Brave New Mind and Night Brilliance.]
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Each week Eric Maisel provides tips on the coaching life. Come to take a look at his three programs with Noble Manhattan Coaching: a Creativity Coach Certificate Program, an Existential Wellness Coach Program and a Relationship Coach Certificate Program.
This is a really insightful perspective on coaching and individuality. I like how the article highlights the importance of recognizing each person’s unique creative personality instead of following a one-size-fits-all approach. The balance between structure and freedom in coaching is especially well explained. Encouraging authenticity and personal expression truly makes a difference in growth and performance. Great read and very valuable for coaches and leaders!