Photo courtesy SnaPsi Сталкер

Blocked! Words are not spilling onto the page; color choices elude you; you can’t embody the character you’ve been chosen to portray. Simply put, you’re stuck! It’s not the first time you’ve been stuck and certainly not the last if you’re a creative being. In your stuck-ness you beat yourself up, and often others, in your frustration and anxiety over your creative blocks. You worry that you may not have another creative thought, an inspired moment, ever again! Your life will be over! Argh!! And you resist your stuckness only to give your power over to it allowing the struggle to grow large blocking your vision, your expression, your talent, your gift to the world. Double ArrrggghhhH!!!

“Being true to yourself is what feeds creativity, not self-doubt and criticism.” – Diane Arenberg

Did it ever occur to you that you were trying too hard to get over your artist, your creative, block? What if your seemingly blocked moments were just pauses in your creative process? What if the pause is a call to you to replenish your energy, feed your creative soul, with what it enjoys, what it plays with? What if this pause was opportunity calling?

“An inconvenience is an unrecognized opportunity.” – Confucius

Instead of resigning to the possibility that you’re washed up as an artist, consider that you are merely making a pit stop. Pit stops are essential to any Formula One race champion and you are absolutely a champion! You are a master, endowed with unique gifts and talent, here to express your full potential. Pull into the pit stop and refuel!

I can hear your Inner Critic screaming now! “If I stop, pull out of the race even for a moment, others will pass me by!”. Nonsense! Others will require pit stops as well. Besides, they’re not running the same race you are. They’re not creating YOUR masterpiece. They are in the process, the race, to create theirs as you are yours. The only one you’re racing against is your very own Inner Critic who has no idea where he’s going or how to get there. He is hopelessly lost begging you, your Higher Self or what I playfully call the Wizard Within, to take over the lead.

“Creation is such an elusive thing, for the more we think we are in control, the more we remove ourselves from the actual creation.” – Betty Jean Billups

Recognize that you’ve paused and allow the pit stop experience to unfold. Let if flow naturally without restraint. What you resist, persists. If you resist being blocked, your block will persist. If you embrace where you are in the process the process will continue to move forward, you will naturally replenish your energy that serves your intuition and inspiration. Before you know it you will pull out of the pit stop inspired and firing on all cylinders!

“The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward.” – Joseph Campbell

Valery is an Artist Mindset Mentor and Coach who helps creative people get out of their own way so that they can overcome the struggles that often come packaged with the life of a visual & performing artist. Clients learn how to express their full potential to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Empower the Wizard Within to express & actualize your full creative potential. http://www.innerwizard.com – http://www.InnerWizard.com Free tips!

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Photo courtesy Trevor Blake

The most damaging restrictions on a creative person’s freedom are self-imposed. What may have started out as a new idea, a new methodology, becomes routine, a habit, after awhile. Habits are the comfort zone. Once snuggled into a comfort zone there is a tendency to stay. However, this is not what a creator is here to do. Staying in a comfort zone habitually creating the same kind of thing over and over again does not feed the artist’s soul. Comfort zones are safe. Comfort zones bore creative people literally to tears. Stagnation goes flies in the face of an artist’s passionate desire to expand and express their full creative potential.

Habits are not limited to craft. The greatest crippler of the creative spirit is habitual thinking. Habitual thinking turns the innovator into the academician; passion into melancholy; fulfillment into despair.

“A ship in the harbor is safe. But that’s not what ships are built for.” – Anon

It is said that an artist of any kind brings a lot of himself into the work. The artist isn’t as interested in the subject of his creation as in his own reaction to that subject. When you change your habitual thought patterns you also change your habitual reactions. You literally have new eyes with which to see and observe the experiences in your life and your world. Newer expanded vision births newer expanded creation.

“Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.” -Susanne K. Langer

When an artist is stuck, dug-in, in the mire of rigid or habitual ways of creating he literally puts a cap on the availability of his own intuition, his inner muse. Those magical “in the zone” moments of full creative energy and accomplishment are fleeting because very little inspiration is allowed. Inspiration is limited to what fits into a self-limiting set of possibilities. The artist has unknowingly handcuffed his soul.

If an artist isn’t personally evolving; stretching, growing, moving beyond comfort zones, then her art isn’t evolving. Stagnation suffocates the potential creative expression that is the artist’s birthright. Treading water in life, not moving in any direction, is exhausting! Swimming against the stream, holding back your full creative potential, is exhausting. Let go of tired old ways of being, thinking and doing. Rediscover the playful child in you. Approach your art with the wide-eyed wonder and awe of a child at an amusement park where everything is new, exciting, waiting to be experienced. Fear and judgment is left behind. Play is what turns the utilitarian into the discoverer of new interpretation, new invention. Play is the vital heartbeat of the creative spirit.

If you think you might be treading water in life or your artistic endeavors, give yourself permission to play. Play with your craft, indulge your passions, do a silly dance. Shake up your stagnated energy. Fully alive and present, be open and available for whatever comes next. That glorious state of being is the ultimate freedom.

Valery is an Artist Mentor who specializes in empowering people to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Learn how to trust your intuition, acknowledge your truth, and disarm your fear and self-doubt. Valery developed a proven unique “Inner Wizard” methodology to empower the Wizard Within to actualize and express your full creative potential. http://www.InnerWizard.com. Get Free “Inner Wizard Empowerment tips” too!
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by Dan Goodwin

All of us who are creative know what it’s like to experience creative blocks.

That feeling when however much you long to unleash your creativity, it seems about as easy as juggling hot custard.

Whatever we seem to do, we can’t get past a certain point, we’re literally blocked, can’t see a way through and quickly get discouraged and frustrated.

There are many different types of creative block, and each of them has its devious ways of trying to sabotage our creativity.

The first step in overcoming any creative block though is to recognise when we’re up against it, and see exactly what it is we’re dealing with.

Here’s one of the most common forms of creative block and some tips to overcome it:

Creative Block: “I never finish creative projects, so why start?”.

How you know when you’re experiencing it:

The main symptom of experiencing this type of creative block is having a trail of part finished creative projects in your past history.

In a dark cupboard that hasn’t been explored for months, even years, there lies a collection of unfinished projects. What were once sparkling with intention and pregnant with wonderful possibilities, now lie discarded and disowned, like forgotten and unloved orphans.

Although the projects are out of sight, they’re not necessarily out of mind. The impact each of them had at the point when you “gave up” has left its own tiny scar.

Over time, this collection of successive scars has left you feeling unable to start another new project. “Why bother starting anything new? It’ll just end up in the cupboard like all the others and I’ll feel like a failure all over again.”

Tips to overcome this type of creative block:

The most significant part of this creative block for many of us is simply the association of not finishing a project with being “a failure”, “a lightweight”, and “incompetent”.

To begin to better deal with this creative block, what’s needed is a way to reduce the impact this “failure” feeling has on our ability to begin subsequent projects.

Here’s some tips to help with this:

There’s no failure only feedback: The only way we can truly fail is to give up completely and never create again. And I know deep down that’s not what you want at all.

Any project that doesn’t go the way we thought it would gives us an opportunity to learn a little bit more about ourselves, how we create, and what’s important to us.

An increase in self-awareness: If we come to a point in a project where we really can’t see how it can benefit us to continue with it, then don’t. This shows good self-awareness.

It shows we care enough about our creativity that we’re prepared to stop “flogging a dead horse” and redirect our creative energy into something we’re more into. It’s a positive step.

Practice finishing: Maybe it’s been a long time since you finished any project and you feel you don’t even know how to. This is something you can practice.

Begin with a very small project, like making a birthday card, organising 10 of your photos, or writing and sending a letter to a friend. Once you’ve completed a few small projects and got more comfortable with seeing a project through from start to finish, it becomes easier to build up to larger projects and do the same.

Feeling “I never finish creative projects, so why start?” is just one of the most common creative blocks we experience.

Experiment with the tips above to see how you can begin to overcome this type of creative block and go on to unleash your creativity.

Looking for a way to kick-start your creativity today? Download your free copy of the powerful and practical Explode Your Creativity! Action Workbook at http://www.CoachCreative.com. From Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin.
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