I’ve been going through life completely unaware of the fact that I’m in desperate need of creative unblocking. I missed all the signs because I had no idea what I was suppose to look for.
In this last year, I finally became aware of my own thoughts, habits, and behavior and how it’s contributed to or detracted from my creative productivity.
7 Signs that you are blocked creatively
Are you currently experiencing a creative block?
You lack motivation or feel uninspired. You might find yourself struggling with getting things done or finishing projects or just starting the bloody project.
You keep trying to find the answer in the world of productivity hacks and follow productivity Gurus religiously hoping something will stick. But something is just off and you can’t put your finger on it.
Creative block is something we have all felt but few of us really understand why we are feeling so uninspired OR why the creation process feels so hard.
We don’t always know what it looks like or what is causing this. We don’t understand the dynamics of creativity and how it relates to our productivity.
So this is what I want to cover in this article.
- I first want to explain how creativity works.
- I want you to understand why we become blocked in the first place
- I want to help you become aware of your own blocks by helping you identify what it looks like in your life
- Lastly, I will touch on the solutions
Let’s first get into how creativity works and how we block ourselves from it.
Creativity is flow – like water or an electrical current – and we find ways to cut ourselves off from this flow. We do this for various reasons but it all boils down to FEAR…
We fear the UNKNOWN
We fear FAILURE
We even fear SUCCESS
We LACK FAITH in ourselves and in the universe/God whatever. The BLOCKS we create somehow alleviate the fear by giving us a temporary feeling of being safe. These are tactics that we use (unconsciously) that work in the short run but always fails in the long run.
These unconscious decisions we make are based on internalized negative beliefs we harbor. Most of these beliefs started off as things we were told by parents, teachers or other influential people during our formative years. We bought into them and they became true in our minds.
In order to become UN-BLOCKED we have to identify our blocks and become aware of them on a daily basis.
As Julia Cameron would say, we need to call things by their real names. We need to correctly identify the problem first. What you might call lazy is actually fear.
The second thing we need to understand about creativity is that the artist you are dealing with is really your own inner child. Your creativity flourishes when your inner child is fed, rested, and nurtured. Creativity flourishes when we have a semblance of safety and self-acceptance.
If you have children under 6 I’m sure you’ll know only too well how little can be accomplished when they get overtired or hungry or when they feel neglected and want attention.
The third important dynamic of creativity is that it is an input/output system. If you put nothing in, you will find it hard to get anything out.
If any of this sounds like you or you want to learn more about The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron – you can read The Artist’s Way: Is it for you?
7 Unexpected Ways Creative Block Can Show Up In Your Life
This is not an exhaustive list by any means but I’ve tried to consolidate some of the most common ways creative block shows up in our lives. I will run through 7 ways and I’ll discuss:
What it looks like.
What do you need to understand about it
What you need to realise to overcome it.
#1 REFUSING YOURSELF FUN
What does this look like?
- Don’t have hobbies
- Don’t allow yourself breaks or downtime
- Only choose activities that seem ‘productive’
- Only serious activities – even during downtime ex. no play time, only reads nonfiction, nothing that doesn’t have a point
What do you need to understand about this strategy?
Healthy creativity comes from a nourished and happy Artist Child (inner child)
This side of yourself needs to play and be free in order to be creative i.e productive.
Avoiding fun is essentially starving your inner child which leads to impaired creativity
What do you need to believe to recover from this?
Fun is important
Play is work
Happy inner-child = happy artist
#2 LIVING AS A SHADOW ARTIST
What does this look like?
We all feel jealous at times of other people’s accomplishments or possessions and the reason is always that we would also like to have what they have or achieve what they have achieved.
Jealousy is a map of our own unfulfilled desires that we might not be willing to acknowledge.
In this same way, the SHADOW ARTIST is born.
Someone who usually works alongside or is married to an artist but isn’t a self-proclaimed artist themselves
They work in an industry that is closely related to what they secretly would like to do but won’t admit to themselves or to others.
They literally SHADOW a declared artist
They feel too intimidated to declare themselves as artists so they critique and judge others who have declared themselves artists.
They feel judgment and jealousy instead of camaraderie or admiration
Shadow artists usually judge themselves harshly and beat themselves up about never going after that dream.
Is this you?
I was a shadow artist for years. Never quite brave enough to wear the artist badge- I studied fashion design instead of Fine Arts. I worked at an art gallery instead of joining one. I even dated (and am still with) my partner who was a self-proclaimed artist in the music industry. I admired him because unconsciously I also wanted to be a declared artist.
I would always be very critical of other artists and say things like – Jeez, the standards in the art world must be low if so and so can sell their work.
or,
I could have painted that at 5.
Just plain old jealousy because I wanted to paint. That should have been a big flashing red light but I didn’t know that it was a clue that I was creatively blocked until many years later when I finally read The Artist’s Way.
What do you need to understand about this strategy?
You hold yourself back by denying yourself the right to live as a self-declared artist
You are either ignorant of your own artistic dream or that you possess the same creativity as the people you admire
You probably lacked crucial artistic nourishment as a child and became convinced that you are just a wannabe artist.
We live as shadow artists because we are afraid of exposing our dreams to the light of day. It’s safer to keep them in the shadows.
It’s easier to fantasize about what could be than to really try and strike out.
We might have been told that we need to abandon our creative dreams because we need to be practical and pay the bills. Now we believe that it would be irresponsible to go after being an artist
What do you need to believe to recover from this?
The only difference between declared artists and shadow artists is audacity, not talent.
It takes nurturing to make an artist
One of our chief needs as creative beings is to support
You need to take yourself seriously and slowly learn to allow yourself to play
#3 YOU SUFFER FROM PERFECTIONISM
What does this look like?
Do you regularly find yourself getting stuck in the details and losing sight of the whole?
You don’t have standards you suffer from perfectionism and it’s not helping you. It is debilitating and one of the most effective ways we can stand in our own way
Ask yourself these questions
- Do you set unrealistic expectations for yourself (In terms of RESULTS & TIME FRAME)? Hint: You never actually achieve any of these ridiculous goals because you either burnout before you finish or never begin in the first place.
Then you beat yourself up about that and the cycle continues…
#2 Do you compare yourself or your work with others? Your work is not as good as these people so why would anyone take you seriously? Why even bother? Wait for a better idea. Have an idea but then start doubting yourself
#3 Do you find it hard to celebrate your successes? Do you rather criticize or downplay the outcome and move straight to the next thing?
#4 Do you often feel burned out by your projects instead of energized?
#5 Does starting something new seem to take forever or doesn’t happen at all?
#6 Do you notice yourself fixating or stressing out about future problems?
#7 Do you feel quite isolated or just lacking a solid community of supportive people?
Welcome to the perfectionism club. It is not one of those fun clubs where people have themed nights. This club is so busy agonizing over the small stuff that they never get together to have any fun.
What do you need to understand about this strategy?
Perfectionism is a refusal to allow yourself to move forward with anything for fear of failure, success or just being noticed.
It is simply put a delay tactic of note
Major resistance dressed up as having standards
What do you need to believe to recover from this?
Understand that being hard on yourself has a negative effect on your productivity and creativity
Don’t fear mistakes. We learn and grow from them. If you don’t make any you are not learning anything.
In order to do something well we must first do it badly
Focus less on your ego and more on serving others
#4 ADDICTIVE BEHAVIOUR
You would obviously know if you suffer from addiction to a substance or something else or you might not have admitted it to yourself. Some addictions are widely considered dangerous and life-threatening but others are almost condoned in our society – like workaholism.
I want to address all types in the same light – as ways to block ourselves creatively.
You might not consider your specific relationship with work or food or sex as addictive but you are abusing it in order to block yourself.
I am specifically talking about the abuse of a substance or activity. We automatically reach for this when we are feeling anxious, overwhelmed, challenged, or fearful in any way. We often experience obsessive thoughts about this thing we abuse.
Here’s a fool-proof way to find out what your addiction is to.
Ask yourself this:
What do you lie about doing?
OR
What action do you defend to yourself or others as your RIGHT?
Why would we do something that is clearly not helping us?
Apart from the dopamine hit we get from eating that doughnut to smoking that cigarette
We also get to momentarily escape our anxiety
We numb our senses so we won’t feel whatever we need to feel to grow and learn
We drown out the creative thought with obsessive thoughts about our addictions
That way, we don’t have to face it. We don’t even have to hear the call.
I used to smoke and I can definitely see how I used smoking as a creative block. Whenever I had to do something that I wasn’t feeling up to I would take a smoke break instead. Or I would feel stressed and instead of facing that — I would smoke. I constantly worried about my health and about all the time and money I was wasting but I couldn’t get myself to give it up.
#5 SURROUNDING YOURSELF WITH Toxic playmates & ‘CRAZYMAKERS’
What does this look like?
As creatively blocked people we are very quick to feel guilty. We allow people to guilt trip us into doing things we wouldn’t choose for ourselves.
We choose to hang out with people that are equally blocked and will enable us to stay stuck.
We block ourselves by tolerating people who don’t serve us and who injects chaos into our life.
These are also people that will not applaud your recovery. They want you to stay the same.
People who sabotage your potential progress
Here’s a question to ask yourself if you are in doubt about the friends you currently keep
If you ‘changed’ adopted healthier habits or stopped doing the ‘unhealthy’ things you are currently doing – would they be happy for you or would they throw you a ‘we can’t hang out with you anymore – you’ve changed’?
Toxic people are not bad people but they will not support you if you are trying to improve your life. The moment you start doing better they will feel threatened instead of being happy for you or taking on their own improvements.
The most toxic people of all are the ones who do not care about you – only what you can do for them. Julia Cameron calls them ‘CRAZYMAKERS’ and that is a very accurate description.
These people are addicted to drama and it usually requires everyone’s input. They are always coming off the rails (when it suits them) and you feel obliged to put them back together.
They have very little respect for your time or how you choose to spend your time. They will call with the most trivial nonsense when you are in the middle of a life-changing moment and expect you to direct your focus on them.
They break deals and they destroy schedules. You are on their time – not the other way around.
They expect special treatment meaning you have to exert extra effort to accommodate them and keep them happy. This is very emotionally draining.
They cause triangulation to stay in the power position. They spread rumors and lies and create dissension in the ranks.
They never take responsibility – it’s always someone else’s fault. They are constantly blaming everyone and everything for their shortcomings.
When you confront them – they deny everything. Or they pretend that nothing happened or that your experience of the event is totally wrong.
The moral of the story is to spend as much time away from these people. They will bury you in their problems and it will never stop. You will be putting out fires and trying to please the unpleasable instead of just living your own life.
What do you need to understand about this strategy?
Your artist child needs friends who are supportive and a positive influence
What do you get out of staying with these people? It’s a way of keeping yourself distracted from your own goals and agendas by always being drawn into theirs.
Sometimes we like playing the person who always helps everyone and we use it as a cover to not do the same things for ourselves. Oh, I can’t start that project tonight (like I’ve been planning this whole week) because my adult sister is having a breakdown again and I need to go and sit there and listen to her teary ramblings for hours. That’s what a good sister does.
You think this will make you feel good about yourself but all it does is make you a very frustrated person.
What do you need to believe to recover from this?
You need to honor your own time and learn to say no
You need to practice self-care and recognize when something is someone else’s problem that is best left for them to solve.
Pay attention to how you feel when you leave people’s company – do you feel energized or drained?
If in doubt, ask yourself: ‘How am I using this to get out of what I should be doing?’
#6 LIMITING BELIEFS, Scepticism & ALL OR NOTHING THINKING
What does this look like?
They are negative beliefs about why you can’t do what you want or have what you want. They are usually about your own abilities or other people’s thoughts or reaction to you.
These beliefs sometimes have their roots in core fears about survival. Like fear of rejection or abandonment. Fear of death, fear of standing out (being singled out), or something to this effect.
These enemies from within can be negative beliefs about yourself:
I can’t be successful, prolific, creative, an artist because…
- Everyone will hate me
- I will hurt my friends and family
- I will go crazy
- I will abandon my friends and family
- I can’t spell
- I don’t have enough good ideas
- It will upset my mother and/or father
- I will have to be alone
- I will find out I am gay (if straight)
- I will be struck straight (if gay)
- I will do bad work and not know it and look like a fool
- I will feel too angry
- I will never have any real money
- I will get self-destructive and drink, drugs, or sex myself to death
- My lover will leave me
- I will die
- I will feel bad because I don’t deserve to be successful
- I will have only one good piece of work in me.
- it’s too late. If I haven’t made it yet, I never will.
- Or about things outside of yourself:
Artists are drunk, promiscuous, doomed, unhappy, broke, crazy, loners, unhappy, born not made.
This type of thinking will stand in your way.
Either or thinking/All or nothing thinking/Black & White thinking
If I can’t be the best at singing I don’t want to be a singer at all
If I don’t have enough time to start and finish my painting I might as well not even start.
This type of thinking is a sign that you are creating rigidity in your life to block yourself from even trying or from being flexible enough to problem-solve your limitations.
What do you need to understand about this strategy?
Most of the time we choose beliefs and actions that will keep us blocked because we believe that they will keep us safe. They don’t make us happy but at least we know what we are – unhappy.
To the unconscious mind – the same is safe even if what you are used to is awful and makes you miserable. Thanks, subconscious.
In the book THE BIG LEAP by Gay Hendricks
, he talks about everyone basically having at least one of 4 basic fears.
FEAR OF ABANDONMENT
FEAR OF OUTSHINING OTHERS
FEAR OF DISLOYALTY
FEAR OF BEING FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED
Everyone has at least one of these and it is combined with what he refers to as an upper-limit problem.
These are beliefs we’ve bought into during childhood that holds us back from trying to achieve our goals or go after our dreams.
Our behaviors are unconscious responses to internalized negative beliefs
Stripped to their essence our multiple negative beliefs reveal a central negative belief: We must trade one good beloved dream for another.
I can’t be rich and an artist
I can’t be happily married and a successful writer
I can’t have everything I want basically – there’s a trade-off
so the conclusion we make is that the price to pay to have our dream is too high or impossible to pay.
What do you need to believe to recover from this?
In order to recover your creativity you don’t have to change all your limiting beliefs/negative beliefs – You just need to examine them.
Become aware of them
Expand on what you currently consider possible/plausible/realistic
Creative recovery is an exercise in open-mindedness
#7 OBSESSED WITH COMPETITION
What does this look like?
You focus a lot on competing and have a strong urge to win.
You get upset when you don’t
You see someone succeed and you catch yourself saying something derogatory instead of feeling happy for them
You are focused on the accomplishments of others or on your lack of accomplishment
It causes us to ask the wrong questions which leads us to the wrong answers.
‘Why do I have such terrible luck?’
‘’Why did he/she get the part?’
We ask ourselves these questions as we try to talk ourselves out of creating. Always feeling like you’ve lost out or that the system is rigged against you.
‘It’s unfair’
‘It’s because I’m a woman/man/straight/gay’
You focus on all the useless questions so you don’t have to ask yourself the useful ones
Did I show up on the page today?
Did I send out those promotional emails today?
We make excuses for our avoidance
Someone else has already written that book, painted that painting, and designed that dress.
My ideas are not original
Someone else has already done it and done it better than I could
They had an unfair advantage – rich parents, connections, and the right skin color, they slept their way to the top
What do you need to understand about this strategy?
Thinking this way is poisonous – we can’t afford to think about who is ahead of us and if they deserve it.
The desire to be better than others can suffocate the simple desire to just be
Competition is a spiritual drug
Instead of focusing on our own choices, we get involved in a defensive game that focuses on things outside of ourselves over which we have no control.
The famous 12-step program AA has a prayer that goes
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference
The competition also asks us to define our creativity in terms of someone else’s
Being so focussed on competition nurtures THE SPRINT MENTALITY
-The best Idea
-The winning idea
-The most original idea
THIS IS THE NEED OF THE EGO – IT NEEDS A QUICK WIN – DOPAMINE HIT
It greatly distracts from the creation process.
It looks for the short-term win and ignores the long-term gain
Your competitive spirit blocks you by harshly making snap judgments about your work
It wants to determine immediately if it will be even worth doing – if it’s an obvious win
The problem is that art needs time to incubate.
It needs to go through some ugly phases.
The danger of making snap judgments on work in its early forms because it can interfere with your ability to finish a project.
As a pretty competitive person myself, I think the root of this lies in the need for external validation.
What do you need to believe to recover from this?
The antidote to validation seeking is to learn to approve of ourselves.
If you need that win – let showing up every day for the work be that win.
Learn to trust the process and be ready to do bad work.
Adopt a growth mindset