Creative Self-Sabotage: How To Prevent The Perfect Murder Of Your Creativity

As we go through our lives creating, there are many obstacles that we come across.

Some of these are external obstacles that we can see a mile off, and take evasive action to prevent them having too great an impact.

Then there are those other barriers to our creativity that are a little harder to see.

Sometimes they even slip under the radar completely and before we realise it, we’ve hit a creative wall. We feel creatively exhausted - out of ideas, lacking in motivation and stuck in what feels like setting concrete.

It’s almost like our creativity got murdered while we slept.

So what happens? Who are these silent assassins of our creativity, and where do they come from?

The reason they’re so dangerous is they come from the place we find it most difficult to watch for and guard against.

The come from within us.

These various forms of creative self-sabotage are able to commit the perfect murder. They kill our creativity from within. There are no witnesses, and barely any evidence.

But if we look hard enough, there’s always something, some clue, some pattern.

So here’s a few of the most common self-sabotage suspects and how to spot them. Take a look at this gruesome line up and see who YOU recognise:

1. “Lucky” Eddie Moreno.

Favourite Saying: “Don’t Push Your Luck Sweetheart”.

Murder Technique: After a great flow of creativity, you feel you’d better slow down as you're scared your weekly quota or allowance of creativity might suddenly run out.

How to stay alive: There is no weekly quota. The more you create, the more you’re able to create. Your mind, your whole creative being, loves to create. As you create more it gets used to creating and grows and evolves.

2. Macho “Responsibility” Bentez.

Favourite saying: “We all got responsibilities, take care of yours”.

Murder Technique: You tell yourself you can’t spend so much time on your creative projects. There are other people around you to take care of and consider. Your creativity is not a priority.

How to stay alive: We all deserve the time and opportunities to create and develop our creativity. Even if you spent just 15 minutes a day creating, it keeps you evolving. And, when you create, it makes you happier and gives you more energy to take into the other parts of your life.

3. Tony “Heartbreak” Colletti.

Favourite saying: “Doll, save yourself a whole lotta heartbreak”.

Murder Technique: You feel whatever you create there’ll come a point when you’ll be disappointed. Either you’ll feel you could’ve done better, or someone will reject your work. You think you’ll save yourself the heartbreak by not even starting.

How to stay alive: Disappointment is a part of creating. When we find something isn’t what we expected and we carry on anyway, it makes us stronger, wiser and more able to deal with the next unexpected situation.

4. “Car Crash” Kenny Valentine.

Favourite saying: “Sweet cheeks, I’ve seen prettier lookin’ car crashes”.

Murder Technique: You tell yourself you shouldn’t make such a mess when you create. You should be getting it right more easily. If you were truly talented you’d create perfect masterpieces the first time, time after time.

How to stay alive: The fun of creating is in the mess, in the playfulness, in the experimentation. If you never scribble over the lines or blow a few wild notes you’ll never create anything exciting or stimulating or fulfilling.

5. Alfredo “The Duke” Torrentes.

Favourite saying: “Hey who made you the duchess?”.

Murder Technique: You feel you shouldn’t get ideas above your station, you should know your place. Who are you to think you could actually publish your work anyway?

How to stay alive: You have as much right to create, and to offer what you create to the world as anyone. There are people waiting to experience your art, your vision, your way of seeing the world. Who are you to deny them that pleasure and inspiration?

:: Share Your Experience ::

Which of these shady suspects do you recognise and have suffered from in the past?

What steps can you take to spot the more easily in the future and reduce the damage they inflict on your creativity?

Click the comments link below to share your ideas, comments and experiences.

As A Spider Spins Its Web: How To Have And Capture More Creative Ideas

How many creative ideas would you say you have each day, on average?

And how many of these are useful, substantial, workable ideas that can be developed and interwoven into part of a new creative project?

Many of us who create complain of a lack of new ideas. How can we possibly create when we’ve no starting point, no initial idea to jump off from and expand upon?

The fact is, we’re ALL capable of having more ideas than we can handle.

We just need to put into place the right creative mindset to let them flow into us more freely. We also need a way of capturing them in enough detail so that when we return to them they still give that spark of energy and inspiration.

So how can we do this?

Well, think of the humble spider. There’s nothing a spider likes more than a juicy fly to feed on. It’s the spider’s favourite meal, as well as being essential nourishment for his survival.

So, what does the spider do to catch the fly?

Does he just sit around twiddling his, er, legs, waiting for a depressed fly to come to him, pleading “eat me, I’m yours, my life is over, I just can’t take it any longer...” ?!

Or does the spider pop down his local restaurant for a tasty fly a l’orange, a delicious spaghetti fly carbonara, or maybe just a few fried fly nuggets and fries?

Hmm, probably not.

The spider has developed an effective way to capture the fly.

He spins his sticky web across places where the fly is likely to pass, the fly gets ensnared and tangled, and the spider moves in for his next delicious meal.

So how can we learn from the spider and his web spinning techniques?

Quite simply, if we want more creative ideas, we must also take these two steps:

Step 1: Regularly position ourselves in the kind of places where we’ll find new creative ideas.

Step 2: Develop ways to effectively capture these ideas.

Here are some tips to help you do each of these:

Positioning:

- Where can you go that you’re going to be inspired more?

- What places have you been to in the past that have given you fresh insight and fuelled your creativity?

- How can you be aware of potential ideas that are all around you?

- How can you be more attuned with each of your 5 senses – the receptors through which you experience the world?

- How can you give yourself permission to be more open to creative ideas? (Here’s a clue: try saying “I am open to the flow of creative ideas. Ideas flow through to me like water flows over a waterfall...” at least 20 times a day and notice the difference it makes).

Capture:

- How do you currently capture the ideas you have?

- How can you use a notebook, sketchbook, camera or voice recorder to capture more ideas as they occur?

- How can you develop ways of getting the essence and juice of a great idea captured vividly enough so when you return to it, it’s still as inspiring?

- How can you overcome the habit of judging and dismissing an idea as worthless before you capture it and give it a chance to grow?

- How can you keep ideas somewhere that’s easy to access when you need to use them?

Commit to addressing at least 2 of the questions from each of the 2 stages - Positioning and Capture - over the next few weeks.

Remember our friend the spider and the proven technique he uses.

Experiment to find your own versions of the spider’s web, and soon you’ll find you’ll have more great creative ideas than you thought possible.

:: Share Your Experience ::

Which techniques are you going to start using today to help you have more and capture more creative ideas?

Click the comments link below to share your ideas, comments and experiences.

Creative Confidence: How To Survive A Crisis In Creative Confidence

Confidence can be the most influential and powerful element of all in what we creative, how often we create, and how bravely we create.

When our self-confidence is high, creating comes freely and abundantly, gushing like a waterfall in the Spring thaw.

We create every moment we can, and our creative work is bold, daring, experimental, each project building on the momentum and success of the previous one.

This confidence in our creativity can’t help but spill over into the rest of our creative life. So we walk with a bounce in our step, feel more sociable, more lovable, more capable, more alive.

All of this stems from having a high level of self-confidence.

Without strong confidence in our creativity, it’s a somewhat different picture.

We can’t get going on any project without feeling everything we do – every sentence, brushstroke, note, stitch or dance step – is weak, off kilter, lacklustre, uninspired.

Because our confidence has more holes in than an old man’s vest, we become super critical of every last detail.

Instead of gliding through the inevitable quirks, tangents and bumps that occur along the road naturally when we create, we’re brought to a sharp stop by the slightest sign that all is not flowing perfectly.

So we create less and less, and shrink further and further back into ourselves, afraid even of creating the things we usually find as easy as breathing...

In short, what starts as feeling uncreative and a bit stuck can quickly develop into a major crisis of creative confidence.

So what can we do? How can we overcome this crisis and even start to get that confidence back?

Here’s a proven 5 step plan for getting back YOUR creative confidence when a crisis hits:

1. Don’t panic. All of us in our creative lives experience ebbs and flows, highs and lows. They don’t last. That said, we’re not helpless slaves to some unknown force, there are specific, effective actions we can take to get us back on track when all seems to be hopeless and in disarray.

2. Know your creative strengths. We can’t be brilliant at everything we do, there are some things we do better than other things. By identifying our creative strengths, we can then focus on these during times when our confidence is lower, and they will help pull us through more quickly and surely.

3. Learn confidence from others. Think about people who you consider confident in life, creatively or otherwise. What are the their key “Components of Confidence”, the factors common to all confident people? How do they communicate, act and behave? What’s their mental attitude, their outlook? What do they believe about themselves? How can you start to take on these traits and habits yourself?

4. Practice being confident. Once you realise what your strengths are, and what confidence in others looks, sounds and feels like, practice, practice, practice. Confidence doesn’t just appear from nowhere, it’s a skill, an attitude, and a way of being that we can improve by finding what works specifically for increasing our confidence, then doing it more and more.

5. Take small, steady steps. If you’re confidence is low, then it’s maybe not the best time to take on the biggest and most complex creative project of your life. Start a small, specific project and don’t attach a fixed outcome to it, just enjoy creating and see how it develops. Then build on what you enjoy with a new, slightly more ambitious project.

Remember, having confidence isn’t like buying a ticket in the Confidence Lottery and then crossing your fingers and hoping your ticket wins the big prize.

Confidence is something you can learn, practice and develop, then during those times when you feel your creativity is getting a little stuck, you can draw on that confidence to pull you through.

:: Share Your Experience ::

When have you experienced a crisis of confidence, and what have done to help yourself through it more easily?

Click the comments link below to share your ideas, comments and experiences.

Let The Flowers Blossom! How To Get The Most From Your Creative Ideas

All of us who are creative are aware on some level of the different stages of creativity. A new creative project will go through a number of phases, from being a twinkle of an idea in the corner of your mind, to a fully realised project set off out into the world.

One of the most crucial phases of creating - and one that is often given little attention, if any at all – is where we let our creative ideas gestate.

This is the time between having that original idea for your new project, to actually getting down and starting the serious creative work on it.

Sometimes we can have a new idea and instantly surge straight into creating, riding that giant wave of inspiration like a champion surfer.

But not often.

Most of the time though, it’s of huge benefit to us to give that seed of an idea time to germinate. Let it just unfold a little on its own rather than try to rip it open before it’s ready.

Imagine it being like a flower blossoming.

At first there’s just a tight green bud. Not much to look at or appreciate, but laden with the promise, intrigue and possibility that something beautiful inside is waiting to reveal itself.

As it slowly unfurls its gift to the world, petal by petal, we start to see more and more of the beauty that was promised, until finally it’s in full bloom, a glorious perfect form of vibrant colour and delicious scent.

If we’d have been impatient and tried to force those petals open before they were ready, it just wouldn’t have worked, the blossom would be ruined.

The flower needs the right conditions, the right nurturing, and enough time to reveal itself to its full potential.

Much the same as our creative ideas...

So how can we provide the best conditions and nurturing for our ideas, so that they too bloom into the most wonderful vibrant blossoms?

It begins with how we collect them in the first place.

How often have you been struck with a brilliant idea, thought: “Wow, I’ll jot that down later, I’m sure I’ll remember it...” only to, er, forget it completely.

How many dozens, hundreds, thousands, of ideas do you think you’ve lost over your lifetime, because you haven’t captured them?

By having an ideas notebook of some kind with you at all times, you can jot these ideas down when they first come to you. Then, once written down, they begin to take on a life of their own.

The simple act of putting your idea down on paper plays a vital role.

It says to your creativity and your subconscious: “This is a worthwhile idea. It could really develop into something great. Now it’s written down, you have permission to let it evolve, play around with it a little and see what else comes from it…”.

As you come up with further ideas, add them to your ideas notebook.

The more you do this, the easier it becomes for the ideas to flow.

You’re building on the “permission to have ideas” and now giving yourself the clear message: “You know what, I CAN have a steady flow of ideas. And many of them are really great ones!”.

Of course not everything you record in your notebook will turn into a beautiful flower.

But the more ideas you write down, the more you let the ideas flow, the more freely they’ll come to you, and the better they get.

:: Share Your Experience ::

What can you do today to start giving YOUR ideas the tender loving care – and crucially the permission – they need to grow into glorious full blossoms?

Click the comments link below to share your ideas, comments and experiences.