Common Creative Blocks & How To Overcome Them - "I Never Finish Creative Projects, So Why Start?"

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.

Learn more about how to unleash YOUR creativity today: just sign up to "Create Create!" - Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin's free twice monthly ezine - and get your FREE copy of the “Explode Your Creativity!” Action Workbook. Head on over now to http://www.CoachCreative.com