Recently Iāve really been struggling with creating my own content. Iāve been hit with a big old creative mental block. Iāve had the ideas. But every time I open the door to explore the concept further, I immediately slam that door shut, double lock it and throw away the key. No thank you.
Catchy tweets? Canāt think of āem. Helpful posts? Havenāt got āem.
The pressure to create useful, insightful but light hearted content has definitely got to me. My personal life has had a bit of a rough ride this month and with that my creativity has vanished.
But thatās ok! No one can be 100% creative all the time, that would be super exhausting. Itās well documented that Monet, Picasso and even Pollock faced creative blocks back in their day. So it happens to the best of us right?
Having a mental block can mean different things to different people, but commonly speaking a mental block is a situation that obstructs your thought process. It prevents you from tapping into your natural creative abilities.
Anything and everything can feed into your struggle with your own creativity. Whether that is stress, feelings of unhappiness, being overwhelmed by the shear amount of ideas you have or being scared of failure.
After doing some reading, I came across a different perspective on why you might be facing a block.
āCreativity can be similar to growing flowers in a garden. There is a cycle to creativity that involves gestation, growing, blooming, observing the object or idea in its physical form, and death. This cycle repeats itself in all observable forms at different rates. Perhaps the creative block you perceive is not a block, rather a period of time needed to develop the idea further before it can bloom. When we can allow ideas to grow and bloom, we increase the chance that those ideas will come into the world healthy, full, and multidimensional rather than premature and fragmentedā.
RMCAD, WHAT CAUSES CREATIVE BLOCK?
This completely flipped my negative Nancy view on its head. It reminded me of the first blog post I wrote about riding the wave, where I discussed the highs and the lows of starting my own business. Nearly everything in life experiences cycles - this is such an important thing to remember when you come to challenging times.
Of course, Tim Ferris has also spoken about something similar. He likes to refer to this as āDeloadingā. This is a term that is usually used in strength and athletic training but can be applied too many different areas.
āA back-off week, or deload, is a planned reduction in exercise volume or intensity. In collegiate strength-training circles, itās referred to as the unloading week, and is often inserted between phases or periods. Quoting fromĀ Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning: āThe purpose of this unloading week is to prepare the body for the increased demand of the next phase or period,ā and to mitigate the risk of overtrainingā.
You arenāt going to be inspired by checking your emails, or joining your 5th call of the day. Give yourself space to grow, evolve and reflect. This process will be beneficial for not only you, but your decisions, your business and everything else that you come into contact with.
So deload. Schedule a āquietā week, turn off your phone at the weekend or delete Social Media. Do whatever you need to do to get that creative spark back. ā”ļø
āI feel that the big ideas come from these periods. Itās the silence between the notes that makes the musicā.
Time Ferris, Why You Need a "Deloading" Phase in Life
After a few weeks of being quiet, Iām starting to feel more creative š
I put a pin in my own content creation and instead sat around, got bored and regrouped. Iām now excited to get back to it all. Iāve recharged.
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Iād love to hear how youāve managed mental blocks in the past. Do you have any tips that helped you overcome them? š§
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