Solving Creative Self-Sabotage
Ron Responds #1
QHow do you deal with de-motivational thoughts in life or feelings of inadequacy / lack of creative fulfillment, in general? especially, also being a creative artist, I feel that negativity tends to pile up pretty fast, when things don’t seem to be going exactly as expected. What is your go-to solution for this?
–Anonymous
A: Living life as a creative, whether it be professionally or as a side-project, is emotionally taxing. Creativity is something that can draw from and form emotions about a topic or piece of work. Adding ambition into the fold catalyses these emotions into something near-bewildering.
Whether they’re musicians, writers, visual artists or comedians, nearly every single creative person I have ever met has expressed that they feel like they’re inadequate in some capacity. These feelings of inadequacy come in many forms and from many sources, and I personally think it’s best to tackle them separately.
Lack of Self-Care
Let’s start with the basics. You need to take care of yourself.
I am comically bad at this. My laundry is currently sitting in 3 large bags in my foyer, unfolded and needing to be put away since last Saturday. I never drink water. I sleep 6 hours a night, maximum. My bedroom and studio are a nightmare zone of disorganized gear and half-assembled art projects.
My mind is so incredibly obsessed with my work that I absolutely forget to do day-to-day living things. By the time I have any free time to clean or cook, I’m already burnt out. These little tasks that I’m supposed to do in order to continue to be a functional human pile up and I fall behind often. This is my greatest struggle, personally, as a creatively ambitious person.
Clean your workspace and living space. You’ll be able to stop worrying about it, and focus better. If you want to find a quick way to feel more organized and on top of things, fold and put away your laundry. Allowing your head to be filled with all of the day-to-day tasks you are avoiding will impact your ability to create in a highly negative way.
If you haven’t slept, or eaten, or had any social time — you’re going to be much harder on yourself than you would otherwise. All of the shitty negative thoughts that generally exist as a low hum in your mind will amplify themselves into a loud siren.
I’m currently having to learn how to prioritize taking care of myself, so that I can be happier and not feel so miserable working as much as I do. These tasks are just as important to our well-being as feeling creatively fulfilled is. Trying to balance your time to give your space to rest and breathe is so essential to having the capacity to continue working productively.
Finding ways to try and make sure that you’re a happy, healthy human is the first step in avoiding negative thoughts. Figure out what this means for you, try to build this into your routine, and you’re going to be on a much better path already.
Lack of Progress or Time
Now that you’re busy cleaning your room, cooking yourself food, and getting regular exercise, you might feel a little short on time. The most common question I receive when people learn about my busy schedule is “how do you find the time to do all of these things”.
I’ll be frank, I’ve prioritized my work over pretty much everything else. I’m not in a committed relationship. I don’t have children. I don’t even really keep a consistent 9–5 job. I desperately want a dog, but I don’t have the time for one. I’ve sacrificed a lot of things that I do want in order to make room to do what is important to me right now.
Now, not everyone has the luxury of being able to organize their life around their work. You might be a parent who is trying to start a side project, or someone that currently has a 9–5 as an accountant but wants to learn how to code. In this case, you might take 2 years to complete a project, rather than 1 month. You might only have an hour or two every week to pursue creative projects.
The important part about gauging progress, is to gauge it realistically. You aren’t going to have the same accomplishments as someone who has been doing something 10 years longer than you have. You aren’t going to have the same output as someone who has less responsibilities than you have. That is okay.
Set your goals and standards based on your own capacities and knowledge, not on what others are capable of. Being competitive can be healthy, but being unrealistic about who you’re really competing with is going to send you down a garbage spiral of insecurities.
Ambition
Ambition is a great thing. It can guide us and push us forward to do some really great stuff. Ambition is what causes us to set goals, to feel motivated in the first place, and can often be a great source of creative energy.
I’ve written about the anxiety that can be brought about by ambition, before. In the linked article, I wrote:
“Ambition is a real fucker. The desire for what may seem to be impossible, with a sometimes naive hope that it is possible. It can fill a person with an exhausted envy that can only temporarily be relieved by a sense of achievement.”
Ambition can be self-fuelled or it can be fuelled by what we see others doing/having, and wanting to emulate that. The problem, often, when it comes to ambition is that we often ignore the steps that it takes for us to get to where we’d like to go — it’s easy to only think of what our longterm goal is.
Finding ways in which to divide and conquer our goals, to map them out, and to acknowledge our own progress along the way is the best way to mitigate feelings of inadequacy. For some, it may be creating a 5 year plan. For me, it’s simply sitting down and listing out my goals, and thinking of how I can get there.
Here’s an example: I’d really love to tour the US at some point. To get there, I need to do get a Visa, which means that I need to join the musicians union and have a certain amount of shows booked. To get those shows booked, I need to be confident that I’d be able to get enough people to come to see my show. I also need to do research into venues, or have someone more knowledgeable do that for me. That means I need to build an audience. To build an audience, I need to make art, and find ways to get it in front of an audience.
Some of these steps are steps that I’ve completed, and they took years. I’ve wanted to tour the states for an almost-equal amount of time. But, I don’t feel too bad about the fact that I haven’t done this yet, because I’ve done a heck of a lot of other things. As long as I keep working at it, it will come. With patience, and when my schedule allows me to put in the work. I hope.
Write down all of the creative projects and activities that you want to do. Figure out what the barrier to entry is. Figure out how you can make it sustainable. Think about your time budget. Decide on what a first iteration would look like: the simplest form of your goal. Tackle that. Just that. Just that first step, is a big accomplishment. Then move on to the next.
Need for Validation
No one likes to admit it, but everyone needs some form of validation to feel like their work is worth their time. Our need for validation is normal, and it generally motivates our ambition. Validation can come from two sources: external and internal.
External validation can come from anything between a Facebook like or some nice words. It can be a big thing, like a new opportunity given to you based on your past work, or it can be a seemingly small thing, like seeing your youtube video get more views than you anticipated. It’s something we can try to control by marketing ourselves and our work, but mostly it’s out of our control. You can ask for feedback, but it’s rare that someone is obliged to provide it.
Getting external validation is difficult at times. It’s hard to measure how much we should expect, and if we miscalculate it, it can either feeling pretty disheartening, or extremely exciting. The best way that I’ve found to put myself in a position of getting external validation is by joining communities and supporting other artists.
If you’re a musician and you’re having a difficult time getting people to come to your shows, for example, try going to other people’s shows. You’ll meet people that might be interested in your music, and likely make some new buds. I’m not saying that you should do these things in anticipation for some kind of attention in return, but spending your time providing others with validation will at the very least help you understand where it comes from.
Internal validation is something that’s much harder to come by. As creatives, It’s hard to recognize our own progress when it comes to our skills and accomplishments, and it’s often difficult to acknowledge everything we have done because it always feels like old news. On top of that, it feels weird to acknowledge that our own work is good. We worry about being egotistical or full of ourselves, but in the end it’s completely necessary. It’s okay to say “Hey, I think I just wrote a good song” or “Wow, I completed that grant application a lot faster than last time”. It’s okay to acknowledge our skills, whether they be hard skills or soft skills. It’s okay to acknowledge the time that we’ve put into things.
Keep a detailed list of everything that you do. I do this in the form of a Twitter moment, mostly. This works for me because I regularly tweet out the work that I do, but keeping track of your work in a spreadsheet or a journal can work as well! Being able to see every that you’ve accomplished in one place, whether it’s big or small, will help you recognize that “Yes, you’ve done things”.
Treating yourself well is something that is extremely hard to do. Focusing on why, exactly, you’re dealing with an onslaught of negative thoughts makes it easier to manage them. While these thoughts will still come about, understanding them is key in being able to handle them effectively. I hope this helps!
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