Creative Block Tip: Lower the Stakes
Are you stuck on a creative project, writing a blog post, painting a card, writing a small story, or some other creative work, a helpful tip might be to lower the stakes.
As it happens, I’m writing a small story that somehow feels like a book, a huge mountain I have to climb, and that feeling is keeping me in front of the telly, and not writing.
The story came to me in a dream, and I kept thinking about it, develop it in my imagination, until one day when I started jotting down notes.
The words poured out as I began to write, and it’s been a delicious little escape for me since.
Then what happens, of course right on cue, I start thinking “maybe it’ll be a book”, and slowly, but super predictable, I start writing less and less.
Truth be told, I’m writing this blog post as a reminder to myself, that I have to stop now, and go back to the beginning: lower the stakes.
“Lower the stakes and find comfort in the process”
Why lowering the stakes is useful in the creative process
Pressure is a creative block. Pressure makes us naturally want to protect ourselves. It activates the 3 versions of fear:
“Attack"!” (fight)
I’m hoovering/shopping/snacking/Instagramming… (flight)
Stuck (freeze)
When the brain senses pressure, it wakes up the amygdala, and takes over the creative brain = we fight, flight, or freeze.
When we create high stakes and high (often unrealistic) expectations, we not only have to do challenging creative work, we also have to deal with our fear.
Pressure is often related to people and situations outside ourselves.
How do we lower the stakes when we want to do awesome work?
Making the best work we can make right now, is awesome work.
How we can lower the stakes, is by not thinking our entire life and creative career rides on how well other people receive the work we’re creating.
In kaizen-muse creativity coaching, we talk about having unrealistic expectations, particularly if you’re a perfectionist. The work is never good enough, you’re never good enough, there’s no joy in the process, it’s just work, work, work.
The idea of lowering our expectations can cause further resistance, as clients often mistake lowering expectations with lowering ambitions.
Those are different things.
Unrealistic expectations, perfectionism, high stakes, are often related to fear of what people will say, worry about how we look and how our work will be received. It’s the fear of not being good enough, fear of judgement.
But really, it’s just about making the best work we can make right now, and share it.
Once we’ve finished it, we move on to the next thing. What other people think, or don’t think, is not important. It really isn’t.
“Art is about the maker. This makes competition absurd.”
Do we create for others as business owners, or for ourselves?
When we’re talking about creating and making art, whether we sell it or not, I agree with Rick Rubin, that we have to create for ourselves.
By being so true to who we are at this moment, is how we truly connect with others.
I don’t believe we can create with the aim of an audience liking our work. We can never please or control other people, and what mood someone’s in at the exact moment they come across our work. It seems crazy to even try.
How much of an influence your customers has to have in what you sell depends on the kind of business you have.
Even still, I work part-time in a clothes shop, where I am in charge of the web shop, and even though the owner doesn’t make the clothes herself but sell sustainable brands, it’s still brands she believes in. She listens to her customers, but ultimately, she sells brands she’s passionate about.
It’s always better to be passionate about something. The energy of enthusiasm and passion is contagious.
A helpful way to get through a creative block
To me, deciding my work is just for me, and it’s just a joyful practice run, helps me stay creating. And even try something new, like knitting a jumper.
It’s when I put my focus on having to share on Instagram, Pinterest, my website that I stop working.
Lowering the stakes, for me, is remembering that I am doing this for me. I create for my enjoyment, my mental health, as a way of getting to know myself, for self-love. And because I find comfort in the process, where I’m alone with my thoughts and feelings.
I’ll leave you with one last quote from Rick Rubin’s book , “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”, and hope it inspires you to lower the stakes and just keep creating.
“Notice yourself feeling the weight of self-criticism or the pressure to live up to expectations. And remember that commercial success is completely out of our control.
All that matter is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now.”
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