What’s Standing in the Way of Your Creativity?
Do you feel like you lack imagination, or that new ideas or solutions aren’t coming as easily to you as they once were? Creativity doesn’t just allow us to draw pretty pictures or come up with a never-before-seen story idea, it’s how we deal with challenges in our day-to-day lives. If that becomes blocked, all areas of our life can get a little more difficult.
If you find yourself feeling this way, take a few minutes to go down this list and see if you can identify any concepts that resonate with you.
Obstacles to Creativity
Perfectionism
Have you been staring at the same flashing cursor all day, or even weeks on end? At some point, blocks in creativity become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Loosen up by trying some easy, simple activities that may not even feel like “real” creativity (hint: it’s all creative).
Sing yourself a silly song, doodle on a page, or find some Legos, Linkin Logs, a coloring book, whatever’s at hand. Allow yourself to create for a few minutes without judgement and see how you feel. We’re willing to bet it’s a little better.
Negative Self Talk
If you tell yourself you’re not creative long enough, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Often times we think of creativity as something rare, a spark that lands in our laps and makes something special out of nothing. That’s definitely one way creativity can manifest, but there are plenty of others.
If you’ve talked your way through a difficult situation, kept a child occupied, made dinner without a recipe or any of the countless other tasks we do day-to-day without an instruction manual to hand, you’ve been, and are, creative. Remind yourself that you are a creative person, and take some time to think about and acknowledge that.
Stress
Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol aren’t great for us physically, but did you know that they’re equally detrimental to our creative process? When the brain is stuck in fight or flight mode, our focus is narrowed, and it can be difficult to take our minds off our worries and down creative paths.
If possible, try to get some alone time away from any obvious stressors in your life. If that’s difficult, or you find yourself still creatively blocked, take deep breaths, sit with yourself for a few moments, or whatever works best for you to convince your body and mind that you’re not in immediate danger.
Clutter:
Physical clutter can make us feel anxious and depressed. Research shows, for instance, that mothers whose home environment was “significantly cluttered” had considerably higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol*. It’s even safe to say that physical clutter leads to mental clutter, and vice versa.
If a deep clean of your space isn’t in the cards, try reducing your mental clutter by slowing down, meditating, or even just having a nice cup of tea wherever you can find peace and quiet. The important thing is to give yourself the gift of free space to let the creative juices start flowing.
*To be fair, by the way: whether the stress or the mess came first, being a mother is a hard job and mess/clutter is nothing to be ashamed of.
Too Narrow of a Focus
It’s always tempting to feel like we have something completely figured out, or that we already know what we’re doing, but if you find yourself partway through a project and just stuck, try going back to the drawing board and expanding your view of the problem.
A narrow focus can limit your ability to find new solutions. Keep an open mind, consider all the possibilities, and try to avoid assuming you already know the path to solving your current challenge. The best solution might be something you’ve never considered.
Holding in Your Feelings
We’re not sure if we’ve ever met anyone who didn’t experience stress in their day-to-day lives, have you? And while there are certainly more and less appropriate ways to vent that stress and express our feelings, it’s important to express them somehow. If you feel like there are thoughts and feelings you can’t say, you’re putting a mental block between your thoughts and the rest of the world.
Rather than building up a storehouse of “things you can’t say” that will slowly grow into a true inability to express yourself at all, try finding healthy and appropriate ways to let it out. Whether it’s journaling, yelling into a pillow, going to the gym and finding a punching bag, or even enlisting the aid of a therapist, get those thoughts and feelings out. Once they’re flowing, some fresh inspiration is sure to follow.
Going it Alone
Fresh minds bring fresh ideas to the table. If you find yourself hiding your work away until it’s perfect and polished, you’re missing out on valuable inspiration and feedback.
Try asking others for ideas. Absolutely call up the most creative person you know, but don’t limit yourself to just one or two people. Everyone can bring something to the table. Talk about what you’re working on, share your progress, and have conversations about it. Even if someone can’t help you workshop whatever you’re working on, you’ve taken a fresh look at the problem by breaking it down for someone else. And who knows, maybe you just gave that person the bit of inspiration they needed in exchange.
Fear of Failure
The fear of failure is something we all struggle with, and particularly for people who felt like they were creative in the past but lost it somewhere, having that “proven” by creating something not up to our standards can feel crushing.
The fact of the matter is, though, that creativity is a muscle. If you’re not flexing it often enough and just wait for the perfect moment to arrive, that muscle with atrophy. Bite the bullet and make something- lots of somethings, anything. Even if you crumple it up or delete the file in the end, the important thing is to be making new things consistently. Creativity can feel risky, but remember that that’s all in your head.
Lack of Consistent Practice
Creativity, like everything else, takes practice. The more often you express yourself, the better you’ll be at it going forward. If you’ve followed all the above steps, calmed your mind, workshopped with friends and loved ones, and still feel like creativity is a struggle: we’ve been there.
The important part is consistency. At some point, creating something new will stop feeling like pulling teeth. It will get gradually easier the longer you stay with it, and we’re willing to bet that if you put in the consistent practice, at some point you’ll look back and be stunned and proud of how far you’ve come. You might even, perhaps, start to feel better in areas of your life that didn’t previously feel related to creativity at all.
Final Thoughts
You may notice some themes that come up consistently, both in this article and in your own life. It’s our belief that self-care, persistence and free thinking without judgement are cornerstones of creativity. Some may feel like stress and negative self talk are important pieces to their own process, and we’re not here to tell anyone to change if they don’t feel a pull to do so. If that negativity doesn’t feel good, or doesn’t seem to be working as well as it used to, though, keep an open mind and consider trying something new.
Remember that we’re all on our own creative journeys, and that trying to compare ours to anyone else’s is doing a disservice to both parties. Do your best, keep at it, and try to lift others up alongside yourself whenever you can. Good luck!
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