6 Tips for Moving Through Creative Blocks
Being an artist is an extremely vulnerable thing.
Your insecurities, your fears, your traumas, whatever it is… they're going to show up if you're exercising your creative energy. The more that you access your creative life-force, the more that you're going to start to feel all the little ways that you hold yourself back from that vital energy. This manifests as what we know as “Creative Block.” Below are some of the practices that I use to move through these pesky creative blocks and into more joy in creativity.
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Practice #1: Affirmations and Prayers
This is something that I like to do first thing in the morning. I sit at my altar and I just start to tune in to what is present for me at that moment. I'll start to say an affirmation, whatever comes up for me. One that I like to use when I’m feeling some resistance in my art is “I value the work that I create.” This is really powerful to do in the morning because it sets the tone for the rest of your day and it gives you a mantra to come back to. You can change your beliefs and thought patterns simply by repeating what you’d like to believe.
Practice #2: Listen to your Body
Take a minute to drop in. What is it that you need? Go, do it.
This is a really powerful practice that can completely shift your mindset and completely shift your day. Instead of trying to force yourself through feelings of demotivation, insecurity, or frustration, take a moment to pause and just listen.
Where does your body feel uncomfortable? What does your body need right now? These are simple but powerful questions. It might be that you're hungry. It might be that you're tired. It might be that you're just ignoring a simple need OR there could be a deeper emotional need that needs to be met.
When you tune into the energy of truth and acceptance of what is present right now, you're really giving yourself permission to be yourself. Instead of doing what you think you should be doing or what others think you should be doing, you're doing what you actually need to be doing for your own body. And that is going to completely change your life.
With creative energy in particular, it’s helpful to ask, “how does my sacral chakra feel?”
That's going to give you a lot of clues into your creative energy and what's blocking that. Recently, when I did this practice in a moment of creative frustration, what came up for me was that I wanted to clean the house. I felt irritated because the house was a mess, but I was so set on my to-do list that I was ignoring it. So I put my to-do list aside for a moment, cleaned up a few things, and instantly felt better and like I could meet my creative tasks with energy and excitement. I felt so embodied and like the energy was able to move through me much more clearly.
What comes up for you when you start to ask these questions might not make sense logically to you at the moment, but I want to encourage you to follow that anyways and see where it takes you. You might be pleasantly surprised.
Practice #3: Clean
When I have a physically clean space, I feel so much more space mentally as well. Less physical clutter, less mental clutter.
There is a concept in Sanskrit called “shunya”, which basically means that the more empty a space is, the more full it actually is. When you think about a room that is filled with clutter, filled with furniture, it's actually less full of opportunity; there's less space for creation in that clutter. Whereas an empty space, a space that has a big open floor and open walls actually contains a lot more potential for creation. There's a lot more room. And so “shunya” basically means the fullness of that emptiness. And I think that is such a beautiful concept that we can apply to our creativity. When there's too much clutter, too many unfinished pieces, too many scraps of paper, it might actually stifle us and make it more difficult for us to create.
Practice #4: Write
This is something that I would encourage you to do if you've tried some simple things like cleaning your space and saying some affirmations. If those little things don't seem to be working for you, try writing out everything that you're feeling frustrated about, try writing about your creative blocks and just see what comes through. Write as openly as possible, knowing that nobody is going to read it.
You don't even have to reread it. Just write down whatever wants to flow through you. If you want to get creative with this exercise, you can even write from a third person perspective. Writing about my situation as if it’s happening to someone else is something that helps me to get out of my own emotional reactions and see things for what they are.
This exercise helps bring awareness to what your blockages are. Once you discover some new things about yourself, I encourage you to create solutions. You can have all of the awareness in the world, but if you're not willing to actually change, you may stay stuck. Awareness is great, but it's not the whole picture. So once you're aware of what is blocking you, come up with some practices, something that you can put into your routine on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, that will help to guide you in the right direction.
For example, if through writing you realize that you're not spending enough time in community and that has you feeling down, maybe you can make it a priority every month to schedule a date with a friend. Or maybe you need more alone time and you can schedule that into your routine. Be sure to make it something that you can practice and give it some sort of structure so that you will actually do it.
Practice #5: Show Up
If you take nothing else away from this article, I hope that you take at least this one practice because I would consider it the most important one when it comes to creativity.
The most important thing that you can do is to continue to show up, show up to the canvas, show up to your studio, show up to the potter’s wheel, the guitar, whatever it is, just show up and commit yourself to doing the thing. Commit yourself to doing it even if it's hard, even if you're not feeling inspired, even if you create something that is absolute garbage.
This is something that I have really put into practice in the past year. I have decided to dedicate myself to doing at least 15 minutes of art every single day. And I am proud to say that I am over 200 days into this process. I have learned and I have grown so much.
Certainly there are days where I put in a lot more than 15 minutes. There have been days where I've put in almost eight hours, but there are also days where I literally just do the 15 minute minimum, and there are more of those days than the days where I'm working for hours.
Even so, I can still see my progress. I'm growing so so much in my art and I am so grateful that I made this commitment to myself. Even though some days I really am not feeling it. The last thing I want to do after an exhausting day is force myself to stay up and sketch, but I try my best to give at least those 15 minutes if that’s all I have.
Even if you do nothing else, if you continue to cultivate a relationship with your creativity, where you’re showing up even on the hardest of days, your art will flourish. The more that you work on that relationship with creativity, the stronger that it's going to get. Eventually that creative relationship is going to be stronger than your relationship with any of the bullshit or negative thoughts. So just keep showing up.
The other thing that is really beneficial about this practice is that the more that you work on your art, the more that your skill is going to increase, and the more that your skill increases, the more confidence that you're gonna have in your art and in yourself which is going to start to quiet all of those negative thoughts that keep you from your creative flow.
Practice #6: Use Plants
Plants are such great allies. I have used them a lot in my own life to help me move through things that felt really difficult to move through on my own. Sometimes when we're experiencing blockages or we're not feeling creatively inspired, it might not have much to do with traumas, triggers or insecurities. Those things can come up, but it might have more to do with a hormonal or chemical imbalance. I personally have used some Chinese herbs to help me with hormonal imbalances. With a few months of use, these herbs have dramatically shifted my mental and emotional well-being.
Do some research or ask an herbalist if you’d like some herbal support. With plants as with any medicine, start slow if you're trying something new, just to see how your body responds to it.
While there are many, many ways to move through creative blocks, these are six of my favorite tools and practices. I hope they help you as much as they have helped me. As you become aware of the things that are holding you back, be sure that you release them and let them go. Take a bubble bath, get some rest, meditate, hang out with people that you love, and just keep moving forward.
It's inevitable that you're going to come across obstacles and challenges if you want to grow in your creative practice. Just know that if you want to move forward, if you wanna move through these creative blocks, you're going to discover more of yourself and that's so beautiful…AND it also might be challenging at times. Keep these tools close to you for those challenging times and don't forget that there is always a way to get through.
I'm here to guide you on your creative journey. If you’d like to join a one-on-one creative coaching program with me, reach out here to schedule a discovery call. I'm sending you so much love and so many blessings. Thank you for being here.