Common Creative Blocks & How To Overcome Them - "I Always Mess Up My Creative Projects"

There are many different reasons why we don’t create as much as we could.

Trying to get focused and unleash your creativity sometimes feels about as easy as tap dancing in quicksand.

The more you struggle, the deeper you seem to sink into a state of depression, frustration and non-action.

Creative blocks come in many different guises, and each has its own particular ways of defeating our creative spirit and energy.

The most valuable starting point to overcome these creative blocks is to understand what we’re up against, and recognise exactly what it is that’s holding us back.

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

Creative Block: “I always mess up my creative projects”.

How you know when you’re experiencing it:

Over a period of time – months, years, even decades – you’ve had a number of creative projects not turn out how you first planned them. You often start with big bold ideas and loads of enthusiasm, and throw yourself into a new project with great momentum.

But pretty soon, the project starts to look a little different to how you thought it would.

Instead of accepting this, and letting the project, and your creativity, flow and evolve into something special, you see it as a failure.

You consider yourself undisciplined and unfocused, and as someone who doesn’t have the strength or ability to see things through to the end.

You feel: “There’s another project I’ve made a mess of. I’ve got to be close to triple figures by now…”.

This experience repeated over a period of time has worn you down to the point where now you don’t even bother to create because you feel: “I'll only mess this up, what’s the point of starting, wasting my creative energy and materials?”

Tips to overcome this type of creative block:

“Making a mess” and “messing up”, whatever that means to you, is a natural part of creating.

Making mistakes, taking wrong turns, getting half way through a project before realising it’s evolving into something entirely different to what you envisioned it being when you started, are ALL healthy and necessary parts of our creative processes and development.

Accepting this can seem difficult and unnatural, and we believe everything we create should be perfect first time and pop out into the world like some immaculate conception.

Here’s some of the ways you can begin to happily welcome “the joy of mess” into your creative life:

Tip 1. Deliberately make a mess: Get a brand new notebook, go to somewhere in the middle, turn it upside down and start scribbling your thoughts in every direction on the page. Become familiar with creating outside of the lines, and beyond the limits of neat, ordered perfection.

Tip 2. Making a mess means… : Write this in the middle of a blank page and then write around all the reasons you can think of, however good or bad. Just brainstorm and write what making a mess means to you. This will help you unlock some of the negative associations you have, and begin to reduce their power to block your creativity.

Tip 3. Mess Is Beautiful: Write in large letters “Mess Is Beautiful” and pin it up somewhere on your wall near where you create. Each day take a few minutes to contemplate how mess can be beautiful and how it can help you evolve in your creative life.

Feeling “I always mess up my creative projects” is just one of the most common creative blocks we experience.

Use the tips above to experiment with your beliefs and associations around making a mess and messing up, and see how you can soon begin to overcome this kind of creative block and 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