Keys to Creative Flow, Part 1

Do you ever get stuck? Feel like your creative taps are rusted shut? Well, never fear, help is at hand! Today marks the start of a three-part series in which I share my favorite tricks for getting back into flow. Enjoy! -Melissa

You’ve worked hard to build up a creative business. You’re proud of the work you do, but working to please clients all the time has set those critical gremlin voices in your head chirping constantly.

Clients are waiting on you and it’s got to be good.

No, it’s got to be great. Preferably perfect.

You got into this job because you love creating, but now when you find yourself with a little spare time in which to create just for fun, you’re stuck. Blocked. Burned out.

This is the lifelong challenge faced by creative pros: you spend your life working to get it right, and both your income and reputation depend on excellence, but nothing creates more of a block than the pressure to perform.

And nothing is worse than realizing that the thing you love has become “just a job.”

This is the exact situation I found myself in after a decade building up a freelance business as an artist and calligrapher. I felt resentful that I had so little time to make the kind of art I really wanted to make, but when I finally managed to liberate some time, I would inevitably avoid my art table.

Perfectionist paralysis had set in, big-time.

A few years ago I finally accepted that something had to change. What I needed most, I realized, was to play again. The thrilling bliss of play and experimentation was what had gotten me into art in the first place, but I’d lost touch with it over all the years of having to “get it right” for my clients.

One day, watching my 4-year-old nephew playing in a sandbox, I had an epiphany. That was what I wanted: the freedom to let loose and make messes, just like a little kid in a sandbox!

A proverbial light bulb clicked on over my head, and the metaphor of the Creative Sandbox was born.

How can you tap into that playing-in-a-sandbox mindset? I started with a few guidelines for myself, which I referred to as my “rules for the Creative Sandbox,” to help me bust free of perfectionist paralysis. Over the course of about a year, that original list morphed and expanded to the current crop of ten (plus one sub-rule), which together have resulted in the most creatively prolific period of my life.

These rules form the basis of a mini-course I developed, Creative Sandbox 101, which has helped over a thousand others find their way back to creative joy. I even created a poster of the rules, which hangs on the wall of my studio so I can consult it whenever I feel stuck.

Without fail, one of these rules (or Keys to Creative Flow, as I also call them) will always help bring me back to fun and flow.

Try my Creative Sandbox Rules yourself, and let me know how they work for you! I’ll spread all ten of them out over three posts total, but to get you started, here are the first two:

1. There is no wrong.

This is the first thing to remember, whenever you’re in the Creative Sandbox.

When performing brain surgery there is definitely a wrong. When you’re working on a project for a client, there might be a wrong.

In the Creative Sandbox, however, your creative spirit has to be totally free to try anything, even if it’s ugly, weird, or stupid. Only when you release your fear of doing it wrong can you let loose.

What might change for you if you approached your creative work as if there is no wrong?

2. Think process, not product.

When I first got back to painting just for me, I decided to try working on stretched canvas for the first time.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I didn’t let that stop me. Soon I felt like a little kid, finger-painting with chocolate pudding. My heart was beating fast, and it was almost as if I was floating an inch off the ground!

At the end of my painting session, though, I absolutely hated what I’d created. It was ugly as sin, awful, truly disgusting.

Thankfully, however, I was able to hone in on how I felt when I was making it.

In the Creative Sandbox, it doesn’t matter in the least whether I like what I create or hate it; all that matters is joy in the process. When I can tap into that feeling and let go of worrying about the outcome, my creative taps open up.

How would you work differently if you focused on the joy of creating, and could let go of caring if what you made was total crap? 

Can you guess what rule number three is? I know it’s kind of cruel to keep you waiting for the rest of the rules, but in the interests of keeping this post to a digestible length, I’ll let you chew on the first two rules for now. Stay tuned — I’ll be back next week with part two of this series!

In the meantime, if you feel stuck this week, try consulting either one of the rules above and see what happens.

Enjoy!

[Read Part 2 in this series here!]

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