Welcome Everyone, to the end of the Cultivating Creativity series! As always, I’m Sol, and today we’re going to be wrapping up the month of September with a final article on how to keep creativity flowing. If you’ve not had a chance to read the other articles, start here. Otherwise, let’s just get to the good stuff!
From our last articles you have cleaned up your environment, made it more conducive to creativity, and have even explored your own relationship with creativity. You have had practical and applicable big scope actions which will set you up for long term success. “So, what’s left?!” You might be asking. Well, there are still some things I can share with you, little tools and tricks that can get you past a block or barrier and get that creativity flowing again!
The more tools like this that you develop and maintain the more creative you can be in the moment, but more importantly the more confident you will become in your creative pursuits. As mentioned in earlier articles, creativity is blocked by anxiety, fear, and lack of confidence. Just knowing about these tools can make you more confident and more consistently creative! Pretty neat, right?
First off, I want to tackle procrastination. You know that big project that you need to work on but have put off until the Sunday before it’s due to publish (not this article, no, not at all). So many people struggle with this, a lack of inspiration or lack of creativity is what we often tell ourselves, right? Well, that may be the case, but often it comes down to an emotional context. There is some emotion, normally a negative one, connected to the work that we are avoiding. In the case of this article, I feared not being able to deliver on this project. It is the first long form series for this blog, and I was afraid it wouldn’t go over well so I avoided writing for far longer than I needed to. That fear? That was what was blocking me.
To break through procrastination or “writers block” that manifests like this, it really does take introspection. A tool you can use is just a quick self-check before you even sit down to start a project. Investigating your emotions and being aware of them in relation to your work, as part of your routine, can let you get ahead of this type of block and overcome procrastination. Find out what the real emotion is, confront that (or not, just do the thing!) and you will blast past those barriers.
Secondly, lets talk about actual lack of inspiration or passion. You don’t have a project to work on that you’re avoiding, you just are coming up dry and empty. Nothing inspires you, none of the great changes you made from earlier articles are paying off, you’re a failure! Inspiration can be fickle like that sometimes, but there is something you can do in the meantime that often shakes you out of that. Do something related to your creative work, but nothing new or inspired. If you’re a writer, just write anything! Even song lyrics you know, or copying a book passage over, can jog some ideas loose. If you are a visual artist, practice drawing something tedious, like hands or faces. If music is your expression, you know you have scales to work on, or chords to finger.
The key here is it needs to be boring and not actually challenging. Your brain, if you’ve not noticed, hates being bored. It will look for something new, novel and engaging any time it lacks stimulus. Also, your brain is lazy, it will always try to spare as much energy as it can. By engaging in a creative adjacent pursuit but keeping it boring and tedious your brain will often jump to creativity as an escape! Worst case scenario, you get some decent practice in for when that creativity does strike, and that is a big win too!
Lastly, if nothing else is working, just step back and give yourself a break. I have mentioned this often before but being able to disengage and give yourself space and time to recharge is vital. It is easier to catch your breath and get back into the groove if you don’t get frustrated or burned out before hand.
I am glad you joined me on this longer format series of articles and I hope you found some good ideas on how to improve your creativity! If you found this article useful, please become a follower on my ko-fi and support my writing. If you feel that you could use a little more direct one on one help, I am happy to work with you through my coaching program!
Sol's Roles 
Leave a comment