(photo cred: cleveland.com)

Sometimes our flow of creativity can be halted by some massive, unseen, intangible force.

It happens to the best of us. We arrive at a space that seems to affect our creative productivity.

So what happens when you are so excited about the way things are unfolding in your life due to everything connecting so effortlessly, then you come to this “dead end”, and it takes you out of your state of joy and fulfillment and replaces it with hopelessness, anxiety, and questionable thoughts of “Am I good enough?” and “Is this really for me?”

You start to feel stuck and unworthy of the same journey you were just excited about. This is what a creative “roadblock” feels like. You have no creative energy available to draw from. Your canvas is left blank and you have no idea where to start, or where to continue. Everything that was previously drawn on the canvas seems to be invisible now.

So how do you get this energy back? You keep doing things to remind yourself of the energy that once was. You continue to do the things you love and you find new things to love. You begin this journey of rekindling that burning flame you once felt in the pit of your stomach about your dreams, goals, and aspirations. You get back your zest for life!

It’s not easy. It’s a battle one must prepare to combat daily, because creative energy isn’t something you just let go freely. We need that to keep going. It’s fuel for any artist, creative, or entrepreneur who has to get up each morning and decide to work and create. So creative roadblocks are the absolute worse, well until you learn how to defeat that which seemed so undefeatable.

And the first step to defeating it, is to not look at it as a “block” at all. You can start to see it as a time to slow down, refresh, and re-up. This can be a time for you to go out into the world and have some experiences that can aid in triggering your creative flow once again. Even if it’s just going to a park, a beach, or taking a drive through the city. It doesn’t have to be this grand escape, you just need to put yourself in space that allows you to exhale and be present. Sometimes what we see as a “block” is really the universe telling us to just “chill”. We get so use to receiving that constant stream of creative energy that we try to force it whenever it isn’t coming as quickly as we think it should, forgetting that you can’t force a flow. Besides, our creative energy never actually truly leaves us, it just changes forms from time to time and once we learn to adjust, the flow continues.


So if you have been experiencing some type of creative “block” allow yourself to go through it, and prepare for the ultimate comeback. This is your re-up.

 

written by Chandra Meadows for POP ATL