If there is one question that I am always trying to answer for myself it is this: what are the things that allow me to do more (better quality and quantity) creative work and what are the things that hinder creative output. This post discusses some of the biggest obstacles to consistent creative work.
Mental Noise
Mental noise can take the form of arguments inside your head (I can’t believe he said that), social conditioning (There is no money to be made. What’s the point?), dissatisfaction with someone’s actions (How dare they?), whatever. The point is that it syphons off huge chunks of attention to things that don’t matter in the moment.
Julia Cameron’s (Author of The Artist’s Way) morning pages can be a handy tool for dealing with mental noise. I don’t do three pages in the morning any more, but I always set aside some time to journal when I feel myself going into mental loops about something.
(Here’s a related post that discusses how to avoid mental noise and loopy narratives.)
Self-Doubt
It is difficult to do anything if we don’t believe we can. Doing something that we’ve never done before will inevitably challenge us to stretch and grow. There’s always the question: Can I actually do this? And additionally: Can I actually do this to a satisfactory degree?
The thing that often prevents people from trying anything new is self-doubt. The doubt lurking beneath the surface says something like: I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough. I’m too old. Or something like that. The point is that self-doubt is often the first barrier to creative work, especially if the creative project is something new and challenging.
But the problem remains: how do we manage our self-doubt so that it doesn’t prevent us from doing creative work consistently. Self-doubt is not an easy thing to overcome. It might take repeated efforts over years to move beyond our deepest doubts.
The first step, as in most cases, is to bring awareness to the thing that we fear. When that fear lurks beneath the surface, it does damage. Articulating what the fear is, can bring some relief. Our main fears might differ, and it might also change over time. We must bring repeated awareness to what our biggest concern is. Set aside twenty minutes and write.
The second thing that one can do to counteract self-doubt is to cultivate self-confidence. Not hubris, but a healthy sense that says: I know that I have the faculties to cultivate this skill (or finish this project, or build this thing) if I put some effort into this. This sort of thing is unbelievably rare to find today. Many people are completely unwilling to try something new. They want easy repeatable tasks that do not challenge them in the slightest. And on the other side of the coin are those that are completely over-confident, with very little actual skill and insight to bring to the table. None of these positions are desirable. We want our sense of what is possible to coincide with reality.
There is a way to cultivate healthy self-confidence. It happens by cultivating inner strength and peace, preferably daily. By cultivating self-awareness. Daily. By integrating trauma. And by doing emotional work.
Emotional Baggage
Unintegrated emotional wounding can be a heavy burden to bear and will make it more difficult to do consistent creative work. Hurts from the past tend to re-surface when we do work that requires flow and focus.
This, of course, is highly inconvenient! If it isn’t hard enough to get yourself to focus on the creative work at hand, you must also be bombarded by these unpleasant memories and resentments that tend to resurface again and again.
For many years, I did not really know how to manage this. I would sit down to write and be bombarded by bad emotions. I would repeatedly push the emotional baggage aside, and try to write. The relief was short-lived.
Over time I realised that the best thing to do is not to push these emotions aside, but to actually work with them, to explore what is there. When we push the emotional baggage aside, it just remains dormant for a while. If we can, instead, repeatedly look at the emotions, the baggage, the resentments, the anger and grief, we can start to process them. Over time the baggage becomes less. This in itself is a difficult process—but it is the best thing for long-term creative output.
Addictive Behaviour
Any addictive pattern will limit focus, flow, and ultimately creative output. The good news is that when we process through the internal stuff (the baggage, the self-doubt and resentments) the addictive behaviours also lessen and even fall away.
Addictive behaviour is often used to cover the internal pain. If there is no internal pain, then there is no reason to engage in the behaviour. (Here’s a related post)
Difficult Relationships
This section is self-explanatory. It is hard to do good quality creative work when you have to manage difficult relationships. Difficult relationships contribute to emotional baggage and mental noise. It can even contribute to addictive patterns. All of this hinders creative work.
Physical and/or Health Challenges
Creative work has really been one of the main reasons why I take care of my health since it is simply impossible to be consistent in your output if you have a significant physical challenge such as chronic pain, exhaustion, injury, or anything similar.
I don’t really blog about diet and exercise related topics. There are enough sources of info out there and so I don’t attempt to add to the topic. I will only add this: a daily yoga practice has been unbelievably valuable. I’ve encountered many people who have attempted to convince me that yoga is useless.
Their argument is that yoga doesn’t build strength. I would agree with that. But my goal with yoga isn’t strength. The goal is mobility and flexibility. And also to restore balance and grace to the body. The latter is important to me since I come from a background of trauma.
When people try to convince me not to do yoga they are missing something important: It is the yoga that is allowing me to do other things consistently. Long hours of focused work, strength training without injury, pain-free standing and sitting, etc. Yoga, believe it or not, has been the one thing that has aided my creative work the most this year.