Creative work is vulnerable by definition, but when you have to create for a living, that pressure can create blocks only a creativity coach can help you with. Creativity coaching is not about art. It's about getting help in the creation process.

My lovely clients come to me for help with clarity of business direction, overcoming creative blocks, and finding a way to structure and organize their creative work.

Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching is a special kind of creativity coaching.

This particular type of creativity coaching is created by Jill Badonsky, artist, author, and entrepreneur, and Robert Maurer, Ph.D., a faculty member of the UCLA and University of Washington Schools of Medicine and also Director of Science of Excellence.

Here is what it means:

Kaizen = means "good change".

Muse = is a reference to Jill's book "9 Modern Day Muses and a Bodyguard" and are 10 creative principles

Creativity Coaching = celebrates the non-linear, right-brained process of creating

In a nutshell, Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching celebrates the creative self and being human.

Based on the biological fact about how our brain reacts to change and honoring the rebel personality of creatives, this coaching is for “academic refugees”, it's not linear or goal-based.

You know deep down what is best for you. So, we do the detective work of finding that out together.

Doing creative work consistently and creating lasting change in your life is a process of personal development. It involves self-awareness, looking at your current habits, and building new ones. It involves a lot of messy feelings and not having answers. All the things you can’t watch on a “how-to” YouTube video.

6 creative blocks creativity coaching can help you overcome

Creative blocks, creative struggles, creative resistance, and just downright peskiness…why is it so darn hard to be creative, when it’s meant to be so wonderful?

Doing creative work is a learned skill that comes easier for some than others, just like with anything in life. It takes the practice of quite a lot of personal skills, as well as practicing the craft itself.

These personal skills, like patience and not believing the negative voice in your head that tells you, you can’t do it, are what make all the difference.

Creative work is a personal journey, that cannot be compared with anyone else. I have to highlight that because it is so bloody important to know.

It’s also the best way, I know, how to work through personal struggles and learn about myself.

The 6 creative blocks below are the most common blocks I see in my work as a creativity coach, and in my personal experience too.

1. Overwhelm
   Being overwhelmed is the norm these days. And being in a state of overwhelm is especially often the case for us multi-passionate and creative personalities. ADD is on the rise, one of the reasons being, we’re subjected to more stimuli than our brains can cope with (this is my personal opinion, not based on scientific data). Feeling overwhelmed is one of the biggest creative blocks of our time
   

2. Perfectionism
   Perfectionism is a big part of feeling overwhelmed. Often, we are raised in a result-focused society, being the best and getting the best results. But performing to be the best also leads to feelings of not being good enough. This is what perfectionism is: a fear of other people criticizing us for not being good enough.
   

3. Resistance
   Resisting doing something we’d love to do is puzzling. “If it means so much to me, why don’t I just do it?” In my experience as a creativity coach, resistance is very often linked to having high (and unrealistic) expectations. See further down the list.
   

4. Habits
   Changing those pesky habits that we can’t seem to break. We know watching too much Netflix is bad for us. Getting lost on social media makes us feel bad about ourselves, we give in to comparison, AND it takes up way too much of our time. Habits are hard to break, but changing one habit can literally change your life.
   

5. Negative self-talk
   This “lovely” voice in your head constantly criticizes you. Omg, it destroys lives and stops us from living truthful, rich, fun, interesting lives. We all have that voice, it won’t completely go away, but we can learn to turn down the volume and yank up the volume for all the good things about who we are and what we do.
   

6. Unrealistic expectations
   The root of overwhelm and perfectionism is often unrealistic expectations. Not to be mistaken for low ambitions. Stress is real. We cannot be superwomen in all areas of our day-to-day lives. Not possible. As a creativity coach, I help look at where you can lower your expectations and go for “good enough”.

You can definitely learn tools to overcome these creative blocks.

If you are anything like most people, you'll be able to nod your head at most of these struggles. If not all of them.

That's when a kaizen-muse creativity coach, like me, can help.

Through a long(er) process of taking gentle small steps, asking small questions, and practicing self-kindness, you'll begin to turn down the volume of that pesky voice and turn up the kinder voice. It is a process that you will have to keep tweaking so it works for you and like anything new we try, sometimes it works, sometimes not so much, but it’s worth it.

If you feel like kaizen-muse creativity coaching could be useful to you, don’t hesitate to reach out to me via my coaching page. I’d love to hear from you.