Posted on Aug 23, 2022

The path to understanding and having creative flow is about knowing the origin of and what to do when you don’t have creative flow. Guess who's in the driver's seat of your creativity?

What do you do when you’re blocked, staring at an empty page waiting to be filled with your brilliance and genius and are coming up with……nothing? Or maybe you are second-guessing the writing on the page -- ripping and shredding and stabbing as you edit out all the elements that are creative, amazing and express your unique voice.

What happens when you’re completely stuck, perhaps have a blind spot, have an idea of what’s wrong but have no idea how to write yourself out of it? What about when the noise is so loud in your head you can barely string together a coherent sentence? These are challenges every creative has faced to varying degrees. 

There are 4 secrets to know who is in the driver’s seat of your creativity.

Guess what, it’s not who you think!

Our Minds and Creativity

Understanding creativity begins with understanding our minds, how we process, what we think, what we feel and what we do. Every second, we are bombarded with 11 million bits of information. We take this information in through our five senses and our self-talk.

Our unconscious mind processes and organizes information by distorting, deleting and generalizing to get it down to 134 bits per second that we can assimilate. Our unconscious mind is not done yet! The 134 bits then go through all of our filters - background, education, spiritual beliefs, values, experiences - good and bad, trauma, PTSD, compulsion, etc., and then we create our picture of the world.

From the picture comes our thoughts, emotions, and actions. This is why a dozen people witnessing a car accident will have 12 different stories of what they experienced - what they saw, heard, and felt. Each person has a unique perception of their 134 bits of information per second.

Discover Who is in the Driver's Seat of Your Creativity

Secret #1

Our conscious mind is 3-5% and our unconscious mind is 95%. You may be wondering, how is that a problem?

We live, work, play and create from our automatics. We mostly live according to these unconscious strategies, problem-solving, coping mechanisms, and patterns. How we do one thing is how we do EVERYTHING. Our conscious mindsets the goals and the unconscious mind goes and gets them. If they’re not in agreement, guess who wins? That’s right - your unconscious mind!

Secret #2

Begin to create a new awareness when you’re blocked. What are you feeling when you’re blocked? When our creativity is blocked it is usually coming from a negative emotion. When it happens, allow yourself to be curious. Even if you don’t have a label for the emotion, you can ask yourself, what does the emotion sound like, look like and feel like? Where do you feel it in your body? Negative emotions don’t feel good. While they feel “yucky”, “yucky” is not an emotion. Frustration is a more surface emotion so allow yourself to go deeper. Anger, sadness, fear, hurt, guilt, shame and all their variations are negative emotions.

Secret #3

Once you have the negative emotion, the question to ask is, “What do you take that to mean about yourself?” Some very normal things to come up might be, I’m stupid, not smart enough, or not good enough. Now we’re getting closer to the real reason someone is stuck.

Are you letting life circumstances affect you? Are you unconsciously choosing to let your environment control you or is it your fears? Even boredom can be a block. If you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, creativity stops flowing.

Secret #4

Whatever the answer is to “What do you take that to mean about yourself?” helps bring to light a decision you made early on that is creating a block. In coaching terms it is a limiting decision. Your limiting decision is the source of the block. These decisions can show up in every area of life to varying degrees.

Common Limiting Decisions

• I’m not worthy.
• I’m not smart enough.
• I’m not passionate enough.
• I’m not enough.
• I’m too much.
• I’m a failure.

Everyone, take a breath.

Really, take another breath.

Being creatively blocked and stuck is not your fault.

Let me say it again. Being creatively blocked and stuck is not your fault!

All these limiting decisions are not your fault. They were created early in your life, usually from your unconscious mind doing its job to protect you.

Now with this new awareness, you can dig into it and ask, “When was the first time you felt this way? When was the first time you felt unworthy, not smart enough, passionate enough, not enough, too much or a failure? What did you need that you didn’t get? If you had those things you needed, what would have been different then? If you know you have or can have those things now, what can be different now?”

“What do you want instead?”

Put Creativity in the Driver's Seat

We can look at our blocks in a new way when we realize our unconscious mind is in the driver’s seat. Then we can allow ourselves to feel and learn from the emotions as they come up.

When we ask questions like “What do we take this negative emotion to m,ean about ourselves?” and, “When did we first notice this feeling?”, we open up a new awareness and there is the possibility to resolve, release, and reframe the unconscious automatics and create agreement and harmony within ourselves.

Consider the possibility that your creativity can flow easily and effortlessly when these blocks are identified and eliminated. Imagine what your creativity will look like, sound like, feel like when you have new decisions -- consciously and unconsciously!

• I’m worthy.
• I’m smart.
• I’m passionate.
• I’m empowered.
• I’m creative and inspired.
• A blank page will be a new adventure to explore.

Can you imagine the possibilities of what you will write and create?

Homework: Remember a time when you were blocked. Go back to that time in your mind and go through the 4 secrets to change your perception. What came up? What was your block really about? What do you want instead?

When you experienced a creative block, how did you get back in the driver's seat of your creativity? Please share your story with us down in the comments.

Original Article: https://writersinthestormblog.com/2022/05/guess-whos-in-the-drivers-seat-of-your-creativity/