What To Do When You Can’t Think Straight

I recently had a discussion with a client about this topic and I think the ideas talked about would make a good basic list I’d like to share with you so here goes:

1 Clear the physical clutter

Let go of the old to make some physical and psychic space for yourself. Tidy up and rearrange neatly the stuff you DO want to keep. Sounds so obvious but it really does make a difference in the energy and how you feel straightaway. Aim to make your immediate environment beautiful, peaceful and uplifting – don’t allow anything else in your sacred space.

2 Clear mental clutter

by writing down a stream of consciousness – the “Morning Pages” of “The Artist’s Way” book. Write 3 pages of thoughts without censoring or abbreviating anything. Do this once a day or at ad hoc moments when you are feeling particularly confused. Continue reading »

Keep It Fresh! The Power of Immediacy

I wrote previously about the “debt of unspoken dreams” that builds up when we buy materials intending to use them later and/or partially create things but don’t complete them thinking that we will finish them later. To my mind this is a form of clutter or “energy debt” in the sense that there is always an element unresolved waiting for us to make a decision and take some action. For example I have gathered a list of some of the creative urges I have bought materials for in the past. Having not acted on them my creative debt looks something like this:

• To produce goldwork/metallic embroidery – I have had these drawers of metallic threads for 20 years waiting to be used!
• To make Rag rugs – the canvas and latchhook have been lying around for years.
• To get into lots of knitting and felting and weaving – I have a whole basket of woollen yarns.
• Paint lots of watercolours – I shudder at the money spent on expensive paper.
• Ditto with scrapbooking and collage.
• To fully explore digitized embroidery – I shudder even harder to think of all the money and effort spent on software and learning how to use it. Only to find out that I didn’t really enjoy using it after all and preferred free motion embroidery using my old second-hand machine.
• To experiment with stamped, dyed and devore velvets.
• To make lots of tambour work designs.

The list could go on… Of course none of this has happened because in reality we only deal with a very very small amount of what we own, inspire and create. Remember Pareto’s principle - the 80-20 rule? I would surmise that 80% of the materials and equipment we own as Creatives either never get used or used very rarely. This 80% is made up of all the impulse buys, “nice to haves”, “must try thats” and other justifications that make us build up “stash” and of course we are encouraged to do so buy all the material suppliers. The other 20% are the things we use all the time/use a lot of. Applying this rule to any aspect of life can be highly revealing, showing where our attention is focused and where are true priorities lie – whether we would like to admit them or not!

Now to the point about immediacy – if I had bought some materials and immediately put them to good use then I would get the benefit of the fresh energy flow. What I mean by that is: I have an idea, I want to create, I need some materials so I gather them and use them straightaway. I feel fired up to complete the project because the energy is fresh and I am still excited by the novelty, the ideas and the pleasure of using these materials. The energy has flowed around the energy cycle quickly and cleanly and had produced results. If I buy stuff thinking I will use it one day the “one day” rarely arrives. Here are a few thoughts on keeping fresh energy in your creativity:

• Only buy sufficient materials for a specific project or idea that you are currently working on or intend to work on in the very near future – like this weekend.
• Don’t stockpile materials for “one day”. If you’re not fired up/don’t have time or resources to use them right now you probably never will. Even if they are bloody gorgeous.
• If possible assemble all the materials and equipment you need for your project before you start it like you would do when assembling all the ingredients for a recipe.
• Capture the urgent passion by keeping the time between thinking of an idea and taking practical action to execute it as short as possible. This gives less time for  buying materials you think you will use later and for the ideas to grow stale. It keeps your inquisitive, creative mind focussed before moving onto other things.
• Rid your creative space of all extraneous materials, equipment and things you don’t use or are broken and you have never got round to fixing.
• Try using what is in your immediate environment to create with instead of buying something new.
• Be realistic about how much output you can make and how much time, money and energy you can give to projects. It might be smaller than you would like to admit but there is no shame in that. It’s better to complete something small successfully than have your creative space littered with grandly ambitious but never finished projects.
• Keep your current projects in your immediate environment so that they are at the forefront of your consciousness. When things are visually “present” and emotionally vibrant they are easier to complete.
• Keep in mind that materials and ideas can have a shelf-life. It would be ridiculous to hoard cut flowers, rather, they are put out in a nice vase to be enjoyed immediately in all their transient glory. It’s the same with creative materials and ideas. Keeping the immediacy between getting them and using them helps to keep up the passion and enjoyment levels too.

Having advocated the above I can see some flaws in it – what about coming across something bought a while ago which just happens to be perfect for a current project in a moment of pleasant serendipity? What about not being able to get hold of materials easily so buying them in bulk at a large suppliers fair for example seems like a good idea. I can see the merit in both of these scenarios but I still think that buying only what you will use immediately is better because there is less chance of staleness building up and weighing you down. If you need more then you can always get more and if you can’t then you can always improvise a creative solution – you are good at that aren’t you?