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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to be talking about how to overcome creative blocks especially writer's block with practical solutions to get you unstuck right now the solutions are going to get right here are going to work for any type of creative person you might be an artist a designer a writer and inventor and entrepreneur doesn't matter who you are if you're creative then you do face blocks sometimes with your creativity and you get into this mode where you're procrastinating or you really feel stuck well I got some good tips that I'm going to give you here for how to permanently deal with this thing so there's really two basic ways that you can deal with this problem one way is the not ideal and the second way is the ideal what's the not ideal that's way number one way number one is to brute force it simply brute force it way number two is the ideal way which I'm going to talk a little bit more about later after I talk about number one but basically it involves pacing yourself and reconnecting with your source motivation that's the ideal way to handle this now here's the problem is that if you're sitting there right now and you're under some tight deadlines like you have a project to do tomorrow or next week or just some time really soon because you've been procrastinating now for so long that now you have to be creative because your boss demands it or your job demands or your school demands that or whatever then you don't really have time to pace yourself and to really get in touch with your source motivation so option number two isn't really available to you let me talk a little bit about option number 1 which is just brute forcing it what does that mean brute forcing it means that you just sit down you literally pick up your ass from the chair you sit down at your computer or wherever your doing your work and you just force yourself to get to work you force that habit that you've been resisting you build yourself that habit that you need to build and you just get to work now what can happen in this situation is that sometimes you could actually spark creativity right now you might be feeling lazy and you don't really want to get to work and all this I know how that feels in fact I was feeling that way today when I was supposed to shoot a few videos here so you know I was feeling that way but I just kind of went through the motions I just kind of enforced my habit and I just kind of force myself to do it anyways and just see what comes out sometimes what comes out is a little crappy because you're forcing creativity to come you're kind of forcing the muse but sometimes you know what happens is like you actually start getting into it like oh and my crazy mic riveting tivities all back just because I started taking action so you might get lucky and that might happened to you but even if you can brute force it let me tell you why it's not a good idea in the long run it's not a really good solution here's why you're a creative person for you to generate value in the world and to live your life purpose you need to be a solid creator that means you need to understand and match the psychology of creating and there is such a thing there's a whole study to this being an effective creator is difficult work the problem is when you put yourself under the gun under the deadline it means you've already failed at being a good creator actually you're a bad creator bad bad bad bad bad creator right the reason you're back Creator is because you fail to do what you should have done earlier and you waited and waited and waited waited till last minute and now it's kind of too late Stephen Covey has a concept he says that's a really really effective and successful in life what you have to do is you have to do the important things which are non-urgent things and most of us are terrible at this what most of us do is we do the urgent things which are not important and the things that are really important but that are not urgent that don't have to be done today or tomorrow we leave those for some long distant future which never comes and that's what you did here so what you now are going to have to suffer is the cost of that and the cost of that is that your work is now compromised even if you do sit down and you pull an all-nighter and your brute force it your work is not as great as it could have been if you would have went with option number two which I'm going to talk about here in a second so just accept that if you're in that situation accept it right and learn the lesson this is a painful lesson if you're going to be an effective creator you have to go through the pains of becoming a really effective creator and all effective creators before they got effective they were ineffective and when they were ineffective they were feeling what you're feeling right now and then they but what they did is they learn their lesson so that next time they make sure that they do the important things that were non-urgent you know what I'm talking about it's when you've got that project you've been given a month to complete this project and you've been procrastinating for for 29 days and then on the 30th last day now it's like [ __ ] now I got to do it how do I be creative and get it done well you've already [ __ ] up you've already [ __ ] up you should have been being creative that whole time so learn your lesson right understand that you're the cost of this is that your work is getting compromised your life purpose is getting compromised and you as an artist your creator you're an artist even if you're not a traditional artist if you're a designer or inventor even entrepreneur I still consider you an artist when you're an artist you really want to put out the best work you can possibly put out so it's really important that you get this problem handled in the long run all right now let's go on to the ideal way to handle this situation here's the ideal firstly what I want you to do is I want you to recommit yourself to your art and to your craft whatever that is if you're a musician if you're a painter if you're a singer if you're a writer if you're a composer if you're a film director if you're a poet if you're in if you're an entrepreneur you have chosen a certain discipline in a field for yourself in which you want to achieve something artistic right okay good so you're trying to be a creator in that field now what happens with you is that you have ups and you have downs sometimes you're riding high and you're in that flow state and everything's coming to you really easily when you're really creative you have these brilliant ideas and that feels awesome but then of course you hit rock bottom or you hit a plateau where it's like you need some original ideas but nothing's coming to you everything you have is just lame and it's boring and it's derivative that's okay if you're in that place right now that's okay what I want from you though especially if you're in that rock bottom or if you're on a plateau and you're not at your high I want you to recommit to your craft recommit to your art right now this is extremely healthy to do because your career will be filled with ups and downs and what you need to do is you need to get really good at recommitting especially on the down parts it's easy to be an artist when you're on up part the hard part is when you're on down part to not quit to not browbeat yourself to not go into some depressive funk to not start to have all these doom and gloom scenarios like oh my god I'm never going to create anything amazing anymore ever again like no this is where you become a really powerful artist is you commit yourself and recommit yourself every single time that you struggle and you get in touch with your source motivation I'm going to put you in touch with your source motivation right now in a few minutes but even before I do I want you to just make a commitment right now and just say you know what even when the shitty even when it sucks I still want to be an artist I still want to work in this field there's a reason why I come into this and I'm going to recommit right now even though I feel bad so take five seconds right now and just go through that process in your mind and make a recommitment make it solid okay good now let's get you back in touch your source motivation there's a reason you went into this field why did you get into this field in the first place can you even remember or are you so jaded you forgot you need to reconnect you need to get good at reconnecting over and over and over again because in your whole career there's getting many times where you fall off track and you feel down and you start to beat yourself up so think about this think about your childhood or think about your early adulthood when you first really got passionate about this field and this art and this craft what got you into it why were you interested in the first place try to remember that maybe it was a beautiful thing that you saw or somebody really influenced you or you read something or you saw a beautiful piece of art or whatever and somehow you got inspired by that try to think back to that you need to get back to that rather than just trying to be productive there's a big difference being creative and being productive productive is just putting stuff out creative is like coming up with really original things inspired things and those are the things that probably got you into this field in the first place so to help you do this right now I want to put you through a little guided visualization so take a seat get comfortable sit with your back up straight in your chair and relax and this visualization will take five or ten minutes here do it with me and we'll put you back in touch into your creative flow all right good so you're seated now what I want you to do is I want you to close your eyes and just listen to me throughout this visualization and follow along and do the things I'm going to tell you to do so the first thing that I want you to do is I want you to just get in touch with the present moment get in touch with the feelings and sensations in your body right now how does your body feel what's actually going on inside your body get in touch with all five senses sigh sound taste smell feeling get in touch with all of them right now in the present moment take a nice deep breath in and then exhale slowly and as you exhale just feel your body and allow whatever feelings are there without judging them or wanting them to be different good keep your eyes closed and take another really deep breath in at your own pace and slowly exhale it and as you do that get even more into the present moment and focus on the sound of my voice good what I want you to do right now is I want you to put yourself into the most depressed lazy and unmotivated state that you can possibly imagine maybe you feel like you're there already but I want you to take it to the max think right now whatever thoughts or images you need to think of to really make yourself feel completely unmotivated stuck and uncreated what do you have to imagine to yourself put yourself into that state and really feel it emotionally throughout your whole body and in your mind maybe if tell yourself that you're never going to produce anything great ever again or maybe you have to fear losing your job because now you can't produce anything great or maybe your ego and your self-esteem or shatter maybe you picture yourself being a washout and a deadbeat and totally unoriginal completely lazy never going to make anything great ever again in your life really feel that stuckness that laziness that sadness like you're totally weak and ineffective and can't get anything done at all can't even lift your ass out of the sofa and just soak in that feeling and soak in all those images running through your mind feel them fully good now shake yourself out shake your body shake your arms keep your eyes still closed but just kind of shake yourself out to get rid of that feeling and get rid of those images from your mind now with your eyes closed take another deep breath and this time what I want you to do is I want you to imagine yourself in the most creative and inspired state that you've ever been in think whatever images or thoughts you have to think to put yourself in this state right now maybe think about what got you interested in art or in being a creator in the first place think about the work that's inspired you throughout your life think about maybe you the one or the two top most inspiring moments in your life or you were really impacted by some beautiful piece of work or a piece of art or were you really kicked ass and you created something amazing that you were proud of maybe imagine yourself as one of your role models or heroes if you have a role model of some artist or creator that you think is really amazing like a Picasso or a Steve Jobs or something like that or a Leonardo da Vinci imagine yourself as that person right now and just get yourself completely energized and creative and like feeling like you're in the flow and that just these amazing ideas are coming out of nowhere into your mind and you're just getting all these creative ideas and you're totally inspired and it's just flowing for you it's just easy and effortless you're completely in the zone if you don't know how to create that state for yourself do it right now don't wonder about it don't ask me well how do I do it just do it and enjoy it savor all the thoughts and images in your mind and the feelings in your body right now if you need to think back to a time in your past where you were extremely creative and embody that right now good all right we're gonna wrap that up so go ahead and take one nice deep breath in and as you exhale you're going to open your eyes and come back alert and refreshed ready go okay good welcome back so what I really wanted to show you there is I wanted to show you that creativity is a state when you feel good about your creativity you're in a specific state and that state it's not something that just happens randomly it might feel like it happens to you randomly but actually it's something that can be created and engineered that's exactly why having a strong creative process is necessary to be an effective creator notice I want you to notice that you went and did a complete 180 where you were totally depressed and lazy for one moment and then 20 seconds later you felt creative and alive and energized and inspired within 20 seconds you made that shift nothing really changed in your environment but you were able to make that shift if only just for that moment while I was talking you were able to shift your state isn't that cool so just recognize that you do have this ability and you in theory do this at any time you want if you really want to so I just wanted to show you that because it's powerful to recognize that you can change your state and it's important to recognize that you do control your own state you do have that ability it's not like up in the hands of God you have that ability so take that power if you desire it and stop playing victim now what I want to do is I want to give you five practical techniques that you can use right now to get rid of any creative blocks that you have these are very practical techniques so what I did first is just put you in touch with your source motivation that's kind of like the ultimate overarching technique but I want to give you five more little practical ones so here's what you can do number one is to slow down the pace of your work a lot of times as creative people what we do is we get into this into this kind of like hamster in a wheel syndrome where we feel like we need to produce more and more work all the time or on a strict schedule and it's so demanding what happens is that we rob ourselves of creativity because we keep going faster and faster and faster we're trying to do more instead of doing more do less if you have the luxury of not having a tight deadline which is due tomorrow or next week then what you can do is you can slow down your pace if you normally write twenty pages a day slow down your pace to just two pages a day slow down your pace but still work just work much slower work twice slower work five times slower work ten times slower but still work so if this means doing more research or reading a book here and there or whatever go do those things in between doing your work to be creative it's not just like you're sitting down and just typing away creativity involves more than just typing or more than just doing the thing of actually creating the the end result it also involves research it involves thinking it involves brainstorming it involves maybe collaborating or talking to other people inspiring yourself by going on into nature or whatever else you need to do to inspire yourself that's all part of the creative process so do give yourself permission to slow down that's technique number one technique number two is explore fresh mediums and sources so maybe take a break entirely from your writing or your art or whatever you're trying to do or your business and go spend a few days or maybe even a week or maybe even a whole month exploring new mediums and new sources what do I mean by this well let's say that you're a writer okay that's great so one thing you can do is you can probably go read a lot of other writers and that might inspire you reading some good writers that you're passionate about but even better than that to inspire yourself completely anew like to rejuvenate yourself go find some other medium besides writing that you could incorporate into your work potentially you don't even need to see a direct connection immediately but for example maybe what you do is you go read some graphic novels and you get inspired by the graphics and in the graphic novels or maybe what you do is you go look at some beautiful gardens and go look at some like masterly cultivated gardens and you'll see art and beauty in the gardens and maybe those gardens will inspire your writing see it's a totally different medium and you would normally think like well Gardens have nothing to do with writing it doesn't matter inspiration is inspirations inspiration likewise you know if you're if you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to be creative entrepreneurially go to a museum and look at some beautiful art now you might think well leo beautiful art has nothing to do with building my internet business well doesn't matter the beautiful art can inspire you if you're a web designer and you want to be inspired maybe go look at some form of art that you've never looked at before like pottery or dance or music or some new form of music that you haven't listened to before look for totally fresh sources sources that normally wouldn't feel like they fit the medium that you're working in go outside your medium and go outside the kind of box that people usually within your medium think through and try to look for new sources what are new writing styles that you haven't even read before if you're a science fiction writer maybe go find some weird poetry about um you know about middle-aged women who are dealing with with extramarital affairs look at that and see what that does to you and just kind of explore what's out there art is a very big field creativity is a very big field you need to get really good at this mast referral world-class creators they know how to mix and match otherwise weird mediums and weird sources that you normally wouldn't have thought of being good combinations the third technique is to focus on perfecting your technique so as an artist of course there's a lot of different ways that you can improve and increase your skills whether it's painting or writing better sentences or sentence structure or any business skills that you have speaking skills communication skills poetry skills uh music musical skills composing skills and so on and so forth site so you have a lot of technical skills within your field whatever they are what I want you to do is I want you instead of thinking about how do I create the next masterpiece how do I record the next you know best-selling novel or something instead of thinking about that that's the end result think about okay let me switch my attention for the next week or for the next month just on working and improving my technique let me just master how to right better sentences better sentence structure let me match your how to write longer sentences or shorter sentences or let me master how to write more poetically or use allegory or use metaphor more or use more colorful in descriptive language let me go learn some new words that I haven't ever used before and see how that goes for me right so it's you're focusing on the technique instead of the output you're taking the pressure off yourself here and likewise you know you can you can do this and you feel that you're in and just spend time improving your technique that's really good the fourth technique that I'm going to give you is to create a sandbox for yourself what is the sandbox a creative sandbox where you can mess around and experiment and just have little side projects where you're just doing stuff and just screwing around and no shippable product is getting created this is getting created in this sandbox so let's say that you're a web designer and you work at some big company and you've got some important projects that you got a ship and you spend eight hours a day doing web development and web design okay great that's kind of like your nine-to-five job what you also need is you need a sandbox maybe on the weekend you come home and you just stick around on your computer in Photoshop at home or you dig around on some online forums or some galleries where you can look at art and you can look at different designs it just kind of screw around and maybe make mock-ups and designs of things that normally you would never do for your regular clients because they would never care for it or would never pay for it but this is just you screwing around with stuff little experimental stuff maybe you created a logo or you come up with some new style of button that would never fit on any project that you're currently working on but you know hey school is just a new form of button maybe you'll get popular in ten years but right now it doesn't work maybe doesn't work for this client but it'll work for a client a year from now who knows you need to be in this kind of experimental mode if you're an effective creator you need to have a sandbox you just screw around and experiment this is really where your creativity going to shine and from there you can really develop yourself and also you can develop some confidence that a I do have some creative muscles and then you can carry that over into your 95 job so to speak so that's what I mean by creating sandbox and the fifth and final technique is to create a catalog a catalog of inspiring ideas you can do this for almost any field if you're painter if you're musician if you're a writer if you're an entrepreneur you can create a catalog of inspiring stuff like maybe it's a folder on your desktop or maybe it's a file a physical file that you have on your desk and your file cabinet somewhere where you have for example let's say that you're an artist then you would have photographs in there of stuff that inspires you you would have all sorts of images you might have videos in there that inspire you you might have scenes of nature you might have even pictures of your family in there so basically you're just creating a catalog of things that are inspirational to you and that kind of source you wanting to be the artist why did you become an artist in the first place probably because you saw some beautiful painting in a museum somewhere or you know you have some something that happened to you as a child where you really got inspired to be an artist so get some photographs of those get some pictures of those or maybe there's some music that inspires you to paint so get some of that music in there and basically create a file or a catalog of this stuff so you can go and you can look at it anytime that you're feeling low or anytime that you're feeling uninspired and make it a big catalog keep expanding it add to it on a weekly basis for years until you get just a giant thick-ass file with thousands of image I'm talking about like ten image I mean like thousands of them one thing that I used to do when I was a a front-end web designer I used to do a lot of front-end web design I would create a catalog like a file on my computer where whenever I saw a beautiful website that I really liked or even some element of website like a button or a navigation bar or footer something that just I liked even like a contact form like oh I like that contact form and what I did I would take a screenshot of it and then I would put it in that file and I would do that just a couple of times a week but since I was interested in web design for like years and decades over time that file grew and grew and grew and grew until there were hundreds if not thousands of different images in there and so anytime I wanted to create a new website for example and I'm like well [ __ ] I don't know uh what should the new website look like what I do is I just open that file I look at all the different stuff in there I just kind of click through the gallery and I look at every single one and then just my mind starts to put different things together and just start tapping automatically it's really a beautiful technique now you can do this with web development you can do this with art you can do this with writing it doesn't have to be just visual stuff you can do with writing and you can also mix and match media so just because you're a writer doesn't mean that all your stuff in your catalog has to be written you could have images too and likewise if you're an artist doesn't mean you have to have all pictures and images you can also have you can have also you can have poems in there and you can have short stories and excerpts from your favorite books and quotes and whatever you want so make that catalog that's the fifth technique so that's it you got all the techniques these are all very practical things you can go implement right now and in fact if you want to be a strong creator you need to implement stuff like this you can work on improving your process getting in touch with your source motivation don't confuse this with lack of discipline and as an excuse to not build a creative habit these are ways that I share with you for how you can reinstall your self and rejuvenate yourself but don't expect inspiration to carry you all the way through you still need discipline you still need to build the proper habits so go ahead and do that powerful creative person he's not just operating purely on discipline or purely on inspiration he's doing both simultaneously and that's what you want to do alright that wraps it up let me give you a couple of quick pointers here so I have a lot of other videos that talk about how to overcome issues that creative people face I have a video called how to stop being lazy which is one you'll probably like have another one called how to stop procrastinating which is slightly different than what we've talked about here that one you will also like I have videos on mastery I have videos on understanding resistance these are all very important concepts that you need to understand you need to start learning the psychology of being an effective creator this is critical this is something that I've I'm really passionate about because I've been trying to be a creator for the last 20 years and it's a real struggle sometimes it's a real struggle so I'm going to post some of those those links down below go ahead and check them out click on them watch some of those other videos and really commit yourself to the process of becoming a more effective creator work on your process not just on the end result and not just on your craft and not just on your art but the process and the psychology behind it all and ultimately you want to work on your life purpose you want to be very clear about your life purpose that's why I created the life purpose course so the final thing I'll say is that you should check out my life purpose course unless you're just completely rock-solid on what you want to be doing in your life even if you think that you're an artist and you're successful and you've got it all locked down I guarantee that in my life purpose course you'll learn stuff that will just totally blow you away and take you to the next level of your creative potential it's a over twenty five hour course of all sorts of material to really get you solid on your authentic self and what the most meaningful thing for you to be creating in your life is it's super important to align yourself with that otherwise you're going to be also an ineffective creator alright that's it I'm signing off go ahead post your comments down below please click the like button for me share this video with a friend and lastly come check out actualized at work right here this is my website I have a free newsletter on there I release new videos on self-actualization topics every single week I want to help you to master your psychology and you know the thing that really got me into this originally into personal development was trying to become more effective as a creator because I really struggled since my youth to be a consistent creator I always found myself up and down and up and down sometimes I was very creative and I'd produce a lot of stuff but it was usually just for a short window of time and then I would lose it and then I would be uncreated and unproductive for months and I didn't really like that I wanted more consistency with that so I started studying psychology and so here I am today cheering a lot of very advanced concepts that I spent thousands of hours discovering right so if you want to really mass your life purpose and you will really be an effective creator you want to produce amazing art then you can't miss this opportunity you want to sign up and stay tuned free videos every single week that really show you how to master the psychology of life and the psychology of life purpose and passion so I hope you sign up stay tuned and I'll see you soon you