4 Art Therapy Tips & Tricks

This week: Dealing with creativity blocks and too many ideas

If you have an overactive brain, difficulty focussing and you’re a creative, you’ve probably dealt with the problem of having too many ideas and you don’t know how to focus in on one. You start one project and halfway through you run off to the next, then you do something completely different and take 10 minutes to lie down and think about it.

It’s not easy to manoeuvre through the process to the finish line because you’ll inevitably reach a point where it feels hard, your flow state has stopped, and you start to question yourself. Is it good enough? Will people get it? What’s the point? Trust me, these can go on and on.

You go from questioning yourself, to questioning yourself even more. Then you seek distractions, anything to take you away from actually doing what you’re meant to be doing. Sure, to some degree it’s procrastination but it’s also just part of the process of having an overactive brain and being an artist.

Art has saved me in many ways, it’s given me the opportunity to channel unfelt emotions and unsaid words into a piece of work. It’s given me safety to feel again. It’s given me the opportunity to heal in ways I couldn’t otherwise do. But it’s also been hard to finish a project and know when it’s ready, when I’ve given it my all and when to call it quits.

Here’s a few things that have helped me over time.

1. Give yourself uninterrupted time to create. Phone away, work aside, nothing to do but create. It doesn’t matter if you don’t do anything, the point is that you’re giving yourself the time. Sometimes it’s best to set an alarm, give yourself 3 hours of uninterrupted time. If you choose to read, lie on the floor or walk around then that’s fine! But do not use the time to numb your brain with your phone or anything stressful. This time is for you.

2. Finish. Even if you don’t want to, get in the habit of finishing and following through with a project. It helps give you reassurance in the future of what you can do and it almost fills you up with a bank of work.

3. Get out of your head. Whatever helps, meditation, dance, working out, nature… Whatever it is, do more things in your day that help you get out of your head and into your body.

4. Banish the words ‘will it sell?’ from your creative process. You can think about that later on, but not when you’re creating.

Books that help with creativity:

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear — Elizabeth Gilbert

If you found these tips useful, hit the Follow button as I’ll be sharing more over the coming weeks and months.