How to Create When You’re Feeling Stuck (part one)

This week, I began designing the course Embracing the Muse: Transformative Processes for Enhancing a Creative Life, which I’m teaching on August 22nd in Port Townsend, Washington.

I was in full research mode when a friend told me that she sometimes feels stuck in her creative work—we had a great conversation that left me thinking about ideas that might help us all.

Before I share what came out of our exploration, I want to reinforce that we are ALL creative and that living a more creative life applies to ALL of us. When we love something and feel called to make or try something, we naturally turn on the creative part of ourselves.

Our calling and our caring open the door to a transformational relationship with our creations in which we become more than a doer. We become a force—a creative agent.

This applies whether we trying to paint, play with our grandchild, or fix a car.

A light comes through us. (I saw it in the photo of a friend holding her new grandson. Her eyes showed that a relationship abounding in creative possibilities—and love—had just begun.)

Although many of us want to create and follow the trail of what we love, I know how easy it is to get stuck.

We are challenged to sync our big intentions and aspirations with the limitations of our schedules—as well as our thoughts. We wonder why we dared to dream when a chorus in us starts chanting, “I can’t,” “I’ll never do the thing I really want to do,” “I don’t have time,” “I’ll never be good enough/skilled enough,” or even “Why even bother?”

These are top hits programmed into our inner jukebox by the Gremlins—those notorious critics that live inside us and lure us away from our creative path. Having known a set of Gremlins all my life, I know that our true selves are more powerful than the Gremlins will ever be. I also know it’s helpful to have a plan to help me hold the course.

If I can keep moving ahead, in even the smallest of ways, I can tune the Gremlins’ roar down to a dull chatter.

This is not to say it is easy—especially when life hands us an oh-too-big load, others require our help, or the world’s darkness creeps into us.

Even if we don’t have time to get out the paints, we can always work on ourselves-starting with our attitude (Step one below).

If you feel stuck

I’m compiling ideas to help you move ahead, all roadtested by yours truly. Believe me, friends, this is not theoretical. I’d love to hear what you do. I have broken this post into two parts because I keep discovering new ideas—and I hope the learn from what you do.

Gremlins love mind chatter and would like us to squander our powers in an endless loop of not-so-helpful thoughts. (Misinformed little guys, gremlins have misguided ways to help.) Taking mindful action is a way to keep them at bay, or at least loosen their grip so we can keep moving ahead on the trail of what calls us.

Twelve Ideas to Try (Here are the first four)

1) Reset the game. This is key to everything. The Gremlins, and a lot of society, play a binary, (winners/losers), zero-sum game (hat WE CAN’T WIN_ about who gets to create. We must shift our perspective from the old way (Let’s call it World One) to a new inner-motivated one (World Two) if we want to fuel our desire to do what calls us. 

Here are some World One assumptions:

  • You can only be creative when you are good at something. (This is a great formula for never starting anything or not tolerating being a messy beginner.)
  • Being creative/artistic/successful is only for the select, “talented” few.
  • You must compete to get ahead.
  • You must compare yourself to others as you try to be better than them. Someone will always be better than you.
  • You are successful only if the outside world deems you successful—aka, buys your work or honors you.
  • Making money is the only thing that counts. If you don’t sell your art/work, it doesn’t count.
  • Art is defined by experts, by the marketplace, by what the great galleries, curators, historians, or your father say it is. The same logic applies to writing, parenting, etc. “They” decide what is good.
  • If you don’t have the right credentials, you’re a hobbyist, and what you are doing doesn’t matter.
  • Only “fine” art (or a certain kind of music, dance, car repair, etc.) matters. You should hide your beautifully produced scrapbooks when any “real artists” come to visit. Crafts aren’t art. Self-published books aren’t real literature.

The list of rules could go on. Every discipline has a way of fine-tuning its own list and then turning the screws to make the points into prison bars.

World Two is inner-directed, fueled by joy and other emotions, and primarily focused on the process of creation. It’s about expansion, learning, and feeling connected to a spark within. It’s where transformation can live.

I’m not saying that making money creating art or what you care about can’t be fun (I was ecstatic to sell my first paintings!). We can live in an inner-focused, joy-infused practice (World Two) and still sell our work if we want to. Yet, for some of us, shifting our focus from how our soul wants to express itself to what the marketplace demands can keep us locked in World One. To share our work with the commercial world (or our grumpy father-in-law) without feeling judged or diminished, we have to stay rooted in our inner knowing, connection with our work, and with the Muse (or guiding creative Spirit) who cheers for us when we make messes as well as masterpieces.

Because of the world we live in, we will spend a lot of time in World One. Yet by taking even a little time creating in World Two, we can fuel our inner spark. (I call my studio my sanctuary.)

2) Be curious. If you compare yourself to others, do it to learn rather than compete. Otherwise, it’s back to World One. Curiosity is a leavening that enlivens everything we do.

When you’re on a path driven by curiosity, Gremlins can’t follow, because no one can tell you what to be curious about. It’s quirky, it’s yours, and it’s beyond comparison.

3) Follow the trail of what inspires you. As with curiosity, Gremlins don’t know how to navigate the world of inspiration. You get to love what you love. You can be inspired by lights, colors, forms, odors, textures, feelings, weights, music, animals, clouds—and people. Make a list of what inspires you or create a collage so you can look at it when the light around you begins to dim. and you can use it like a shield in the case of a gremlin attack. Tell them, “This inspires me and fills my soul, and you get NO SAY in that.”
(Do tell the Gremlins, though, that you appreciate their weird ways of helping….they really are trying.)

4) Take action, however small, toward what calls you. Maybe you only have five minutes, so take the smallest of steps. Something happens when we step through the invisible curtain between not doing what say we want to do and starting something—especially when we play and experiment. Crossing that boundary is a BIG step, and we may stall out when we find ourselves facing our project (the blank page, screen, or canvas) without knowing how to begin.

It helps to have a few go-to ideas when you’re facing the blankness of I-don’t-know-what-I-am-going-to-do. Some artists scribble marks on a canvas to warm up and “get something going.” Later, they paint over them. Writers may free-write, allowing thoughts to tumble out without concern for utility or craft.

For some, doing a ritual helps. (For me, it’s often tea.) A favorite drawing teacher of mine makes toast before he goes to work. A cook may unload the dishwasher or sweep the floor as a ritual of preparation that launches their cooking process. Dancers have warm-up routines.



I’ll leave the next eight steps for my next post. Because it’s step one that’s key. If you can keep coming back to World Two, and feeding your joy rather than your defeatist comparisons, you’ll be ready for inspiration, insight, and the guiding spirit I call the Muse.

When we feed our right to play and make whatever project, process, or endeavor calls to us, we’re taking a stance. We’re claiming our right to live from the inside out, notice what enlivens us, take agency for what we love and like, and honor the needs of our souls.

Then, the Muse patiently waiting for us can support our inner growth while guiding our creative work.

I’ll be back soon with the next eight steps. But first, I’d love to know yours. What do you do to get started and keep going?

The stakes are high. In our uber-competitive, externally-focused world, creatives (aka all of us) need support and strategies to navigate through World One without forgetting our right to be who we are and create what we love.

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