Beat Perfectionism! Top Techniques To Keep Your Creativity Alive

Perfectionism - the need for every last detail of your creative projects to be exactly right down to the last button, beat or brushstroke - is a major creativity killer.

Think about your own experiences of perfectionism for a moment and how it's affected your creative confidence and your ability to finish creative projects.

Maybe you recognise the following kind of scenario:

You have a great idea for a new project, your enthusiasm is bubbling over and you throw yourself into creating with great excitement.

This initial momentum carries you through about 80% of the project easily and you're so immersed in your work - and having so much fun - you completely lose track of time. 4 hours pass in what seems like about 4 minutes.

Then, from nowhere, up pops our old friend Mr Perfect.

You know you're approaching a natural point to finish your project, and somehow whenever you get to this stage, Mr Perfect seems to appear.

From then on, your creative energy plummets, you start to doubt all you've created in this project so far, and all you can focus on is the seemingly impossible mission of ever getting this finished.

There are two great techniques to use to prevent and overcome these kind of miserable experiences when you're in the grip of perfectionism.

1. Practice finishing creative projects.

The more creative projects you start and don't finish, the more difficult it becomes to finish ANY new project. You begin to develop a complex about not being able to see a project through to the end, and feelings of being a failure or useless become stronger.

The way to overcome this is simply to practice finishing. Get used to the experience of going through every stage of a creative project, from beginning to end.

The easiest way to do this is to regularly pick small projects to work on, as well as the larger, more complex ones. For example an Artist Trading Card or a Haiku are both small but rewarding projects that can be done in 15 minutes. The more comfortable you become with finishing these smaller projects, the easier it'll be to finish your more complex ones.

2. Practice making a mess and scribbling over the lines.

Fear of making a mistake or making a mess is often a huge element of perfectionism. Again, practice in doing this will help you become more familiar and accepting of it and make it less of an issue when it happens. Remember too, some of the most interesting experiences of your creative life can come from "happy accidents".

Here's a simple and fun way to get started. Buy a childrens colouring book, one with thick black lines and big bold pictures and some coloured pens. Then pick a page at random and start writing wherever in the page you feel is the least perfect and most messy place to start.

It doesn't matter if you write out a shopping list, just write something, using a number of different colours, and all over the lines of the picture outlined in the book. It might make you feel awful at first, like you're committing some unforgivable sin. But the more you do it, the more comfortable you'll be. And the less you'll have that desire to be utterly perfect in the rest of your creating.

Practice these two techniques regularly and you'll be well on your way to overcome the dreaded perfectionism, and be able to create more freely, and more enjoyably.

This is one of many ways you can be more creative.

And to kick-start your creativity today I invite you to download your free copy of the powerful and practical Explode Your Creativity! Action Workbook at http://www.CoachCreative.com.