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What if I told you that your creative blocks were actually just your body screaming for help?
👋 How to Overcome Creative Block
I don’t want to sound that dramatic, but if you are feeling creative block, the truth is it actually is just tension. That’s really the creative block meaning: tension.
Let me break down how you can actually alleviate that tension, because there is a way to do that.
It can be really frustrating for artists who just want to create.
For those of you who have full time jobs and you have a limited amount of time that you can spend on your creativity.
You want to maximize all that time. And when you do feel that creative block, we’re sitting down trying to figure out where to go from this blank screen. There is a way to get past it. Creative blocks aren’t. Real. And listen, I know that creative blocks are actually a thing, but what it really is, is just tension. And as soon as you know how to alleviate that tension, you are golden.
Creative blocks are basically your body’s way of telling you that something in your environment, in yourself, or in your rituals is just slightly off.
Or that there is a lack of one of these things.
But what does this actually mean?
How can we break this down in a way that you can actually take action from and not have creative blocks anymore?
When I started this channel I realized that everything to do with striving to be a creative, all really just breaks down to what I like to call the three lifestyle muses, the three facets of your life that makes or breaks how your lifestyle is.
Your home, your body, and your creative career.
✨ The 3 Lifestyle Muses: Home, Body & Creative Career
🪴 Home
Usually if you’re feeling a creativity block, there’s something within one of those lifestyle muses that are actually just somehow not working all you need to do is figure out in which category it is and what’s actually going on then you’ll know how to fix it.
Let’s break it down. Starting with your home I know your home might not be the first thing that you’re thinking about as an artist, right? You have so many other things to think about. You’re building your creative business. You want to be an artist full time. Why are we talking about your actual home or the space that you live?
I realized during 2020, there’s so many elements to being mindful about your home that far surpasses just like liking interior design your home really is a really essential part of who you are as an artist because your home is going to help you spark your inspiration. It’s where you go to sleep. It’s where you wake up. It’s where you eat. It nurtures you. It’s like your mother. You want to treat it with respect because the more you give to it, the more it’s going to be able to give back to you.
I really put a lot of intention in my home because I know that it’s going to help me nurture my creativity. You might find that If you aren’t feeling creative or if you do feel this block, it could actually be coming from the space that you’re in.
I always like to start with clutter because when we moved to South Carolina, about a year in, I think we were just having a really hard time, unpacking everything.
We had moved from New Jersey trying to figure out how to organize everything, how to not make all the closet so crazy. How do we have all this stuff? We don’t know if we’re going to donate it or keep it. I read both of Marie Kondo’s books, and if you haven’t checked out any of her books, you definitely should.
She also has a series on Netflix, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I read these books and it literally changed my life. When it comes to organizing my home, but then also the intentionality that I put behind the items in my home.
She talks about specifically clutter and clutter comes in visual clutter and it comes in emotional clutter. Visual clutter is this idea that if you have a lot of like labels, if you have a lot of things out, if you have a lot of your cereal boxes out on display and you’re seeing all these colors and the nutrition facts and everything, That’s actually going to make you really tired when you’re walking around the house.
If you feel like you’re walking around your home and you’re just like exhausted, I bet you there might be something within your home, clutter wise, that you might be able to work on a little bit. Whether it’s actually just applying the Marie Kondo process of, only keeping things that spark joy or just understanding that, you’re adding a lot of visual clutter to your space.
You have a lot of labels out and you’re not just showcasing things that you love. I am in no way perfect of this. I try every single day to try to be a little bit less cluttered. And I did apply the Marie Kondo process and it helped a lot, I really like to only have colors and items visually that I can see that spark joy for me.
After I like actually got rid of things that didn’t spark joy, I started to make sure I want every single thing that I see to spark joy. Replacing clutter with literally Marie Kondo ing your home. If you feel whenever you go home it’s just more anxiety ridden, you Maybe think about just taking a weekend and totally Marie Kondo ing your place.
This also applies to things like colors. What sort of colors are in your home and what colors do you love? I know that a lot of you are probably renters. I’m a renter as well. And listen, it’s just paint, right?
I knew that we were going to stay in this home for two to three years. And so, yeah, I, I spent, A hundred bucks on a can of paint, and I painted our bedroom, and I know I’m gonna have to spend more money to paint it back, but it brings me joy.
It gives me inspiration. I literally wake up surrounded By my favorite color and my things that spark joy for me So instead of it draining me instead of it taking away my energy and giving me these creativity blocks and lags It’s actually releasing any sort of tension It actually gives me energy and freedom to be myself if that makes sense I feel like this is an explosion of myself and that’s what your home really should be for you
Another really big part of this is actually emphasizing sunlight in your space.
Vitamin D, we all know we need, and a lot of us who work from home or work in buildings that don’t have a lot of sunlight can be really vitamin D deficient. I take supplements in the morning, but I do try to get natural vitamin D every day. A big part of getting this energy is just actually like finding ways to bring more sunlight into your home.
I really emphasize like tall curtains, curtains that are always open, because sunlight’s literally going to give you more energy. Whether it’s putting cute window decals on the windows, getting curtains and just putting them really high up and making them even white.
So they draw the attention just to It’s very free flowing vibes, like making it easy to just go to your windows and open the curtains and just bring the sunlight in anything to overemphasize the sunlight in your home.
You also going to want to think about shapes. There’s a feng shui principle. I am not a feng shui expert, that spikes could break up certain energy. I actually have this one piece that I’m giving to someone else because whenever I see it, like visually, it’s so pretty.
It looks like a sun, but it’s like spiky. spiky. I feel like. anxious every time I’m around it. Think about the types of shapes that are in your home. Do you only have tables that have edges? Do you only have furniture pieces that are just sharp edges? Where can you invite maybe some more round edges?
That kind of give you this more like free flowing, playful vibe. There’s a nice way to mix these things to really give you this nice clean style that feels like modern, but also cute and vintage.
I have round tables next to our bed because I just like the idea of, this gentle energy.
Items that are gonna have an edge might give you more of an edge, if that makes sense. It’s so weird how energetically shapes, colors, things in your home can actually affect you.
General feng shui elements, look up the rules of feng shui. I actually did this myself when I was starting to redecorate a little bit and realized that I had a lot of items that were of the same element. Fire and water and the other elements that I’m not remembering.
Different items like wood versus fabrics versus metals there should be a little bit of a mixture of all of these things.
They should be things that again, overall sparking joy. joy for you. Because when you’re looking around your home and it’s making you smile, it’s giving you that little flutter in your heart.
It’s making you feel cozy and comfortable. And you are more likely to create when you are feeling comfortable than if you are feeling tense and anxious.
It sounds really basic, but it’s just something to think about. Think about how you feel when you go inside your home.
Think about the different shapes, styles, colors, and the things that you love that might not be around your home. The things that you wish your home could be and how hard it really is to actually make that happen.
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🧘♀️ Body
Next up, we got your body. I would say your body is probably the most important part of your creative life because you physically can’t do anything without your body.
If we’re not treating our bodies in a way that we actually feel well. excited and energetic, we’re not going to have the energy to actually create.
I have been a vegetarian for 10 years now.
And I’ve been dairy free for probably five. When I first became vegetarian I all of a sudden felt like my gut was just free. Like it was just free flowing. It feels so silly to say.
I’m just saying from my experience,
This was a specific diet that I had understood actually works really well for my body, not eating meat or dairy.
I’m grateful that I wake up in the mornings and I have energy. I take supplements that help calm me down. I take L theanine. I take vitamin D. I eat plant based. I eat several meals throughout the day, I have a lot of smoothies, functional mushrooms, I go roller skating, I exercise, I do the red light therapy, acupressure mats, acupuncture, massages.
This isn’t to say that I’m, like, so amazing, but this is to say that I’m just treating my body like an instrument, you need to clean your instrument, you need to make sure it’s stored in a place that it’s going to stay in tune, your body is your instrument.
What actions do you feel like you could be taking that you might not be taking? What actions do you feel like you definitely need to take that, your body would thank you for?
It might be more of an experiment. There are certain things for both me and Static that we’re still trying to figure out, like, huh, maybe if I did this every morning, it would make me feel better.
Or maybe if I stopped eating this, it would make me feel better.
We’re always experimenting.
I think that’s the most important part of this, finding obviously specialists to help you if you feel like you need a little bit more of that, but a lot of it is experimenting and just trying new things like, oh, maybe I’ll go gluten free for a week and see if that helps, if that’s something that, your body could handle.
There are so, so, so many ways that your body needs to be nurtured. If you feel like. You’re feeling this creativity blocked, it could be because your body physically can’t handle and taking anything until it’s able to heal itself.
Maybe your body doesn’t feel like it’s getting enough exercise maybe your body feels like it needs to just go out and run we need to treat our bodies like a temple.
It sounds so cliche, but it is true. Our bodies also affect our minds.
Last Thursday, for some reason, we like stayed up really late doing something. I don’t remember what it was, but. We had our usual songwriting session every Thursday, and I still went to it.
But I was so tired and I could not write anything I was recording him, he had some ideas, I was taking those down, and I’m like, I’m so sorry, I can’t write anything right now, I’m gonna take it into consideration, I’m gonna listen to it at the gym, I’m gonna listen to it on my walks, but I can’t do anything right now.
I think that was a really good example of, my body being like, yeah, no, like, I’m sorry, you can’t do this.
I’m talking about caring for your body and the word self care, I’m sure you’ve heard a lot thrown around, but I want you to look at self care differently.
I want you to look at self care practices as rituals.
I don’t mean to think of them as routines or chores or habits, unless those words are helpful, but I feel like you’re an artist who probably really prioritizes and loves making things as energetic and soulful as possible.
And so I found that actually turning chores into rituals is really helpful. For example, theming your days is one thing that can be really cute.
This is really common amongst content creators and freelancers when you have control over your schedule.
Mondays could be meeting days where you just do all of your meetings in that one Monday.
Tuesdays could be content creation days, where you record your YouTube videos and your social media reels wednesdays could be editing day,
thursdays could be some other day, and Friday could be a potato day. I’ve heard of potato day a lot, and it’s just where you don’t do anything, it’s your day off.
And Saturdays, Sundays as well, could be those themed days too
Something also that I do is a time block. So Mentioned earlier with songwriting sessions. We do that every Thursday. I time block two hours. It’s on both of our schedules We cannot book any meetings during them.
We can’t do anything during them. We always have that time. You can also time block self care. If you want to spend 45 minutes roller skating in the mornings, put that in your calendar, 45 minutes, 8 roller skating, time block that, put that in your calendar as if it’s as important as a meeting because it is.
Habit stacking is a really big part of this.
Habit stacking is the idea that you’re pairing something that you know you need to do with something that you already do slash love to do. if you want to spend 20 minutes a day on your acupressure mat, which I do want to do, but it’s sometimes hard for me to get to it because it’s just the idea of sitting down after I’m bopping around all day is hard.
But if I say every time I’m on the acupressure mat, I can watch new girl. That is different, because I’m already going to want to watch New Girl, you’re stacking two habits together to make a ritual, really, is what it is.
More romanticized and more enjoyable for you, because who says that self care cannot be fun? I enjoy going to get a massage, but there are other certain things like Exercising sometimes that I’m like blah. I don’t want to do that But if there’s a really cool podcast that i’m listening to i’m like, oh i’ll just listen to the podcast while i’m doing it Great.
It’s enjoyable now.
🌷 Career
The third lifestyle muse is your career. The systems you’ve built for your career. It’s the goals that you have for your creative career.
This is the big difference. Are you working a starving artist job, or are you working a cozy girl job? I know I have some male followers, so I want to make sure you know that this could also be called a cozy guy job. A cozy person job, the underlying meaning just rings true, whether it’s girl or guy or person.
There is different types of work that’s going to drain you or give you energy. there are a lot of artists, especially who live in big cities, who work as waitstaff.
They work in restaurants. Service jobs. Coffee shops, usually more higher stakes jobs that give you the opportunity to get tips, if this is energizing to you, that is amazing. But for the majority of people that I know, I know that having This in person, physically taxing, emotionally taxing, very extroverted sort of job can make them really tired.
And so it’s no wonder that you’re going back home and you’re trying to do your art and you’re like, I don’t have any ideas. It’s not because you’re in a creative block. It’s because your body is tense from working this 10th job.
But then you might also feel this career tension maybe there’s not really a way to make more money from this. Maybe there’s a cap to the amount of money you can make
whereas if you were working freelance or if you were to get a full time job,
there’d be opportunities for you to, give yourself a raise. If you’re a freelancer, take on more clients. Or if you want to work a full time job, There’s opportunities for recurring income.
However long you’re at this full time job, you get paid either way as long as you’re on the team.
The tension that comes from a starving artist’s job that’s emotionally taxing, physically taxing, Might make you feel like I don’t know a way out. I don’t know how to transition this into a creative career that I want to do, whether it’s being an Etsy shop owner or a full time singer, songwriter, or a dancer, whatever that is.
It could be very hard to see that out when you’re in a job that’s exhausting. And then because it’s exhausting, you don’t feel like you have energy to do your art. And so you feel stuck. This is the difference between the starving artist job and this cozy girl job.
This is not to say it is your fault that you’re in a starving artist job.
I really actually just want to use this as an example. It’s really a mindset, honestly. I do remember during 2020 when I kind of had some time to like real reevaluate myself. I was working as a substitute teacher at that time. I was also working in food service And I was just thinking to myself like I am just scraping by i’m working minimum wage I have to be in person for these jobs So I physically don’t have any time to do my creativity because i’m in person all day I get home and I just want to sleep
I just want you to think about this whole concept of the starving artist job versus the cozy girl job.
So the starving artist job, these are inconsistent, these are one-off, or even if they are consistent, it’s minimum wage. There’s very few ways of growing, right? You could potentially be a manager, but you’re making like two more dollars an hour, like. that’s great, but that might really not get you to where you want to be.
this is also usually in person. It’s mentally, it’s physically taxing and exhausting. And again, I don’t want you to think that I’m calling you like starving artist. Like it’s really just the phrase starving artist.
I feel like a lot of people joke around and say yeah, I’m a starving artist, but I actually want to get rid of this phrase because I think it is a mindset that keeps us held back and makes us think because I’m an artist, I have to struggle because I’m an artist.
I have to not make money or else I’m not working hard enough, or I don’t deserve it because I haven’t put in the work. Now if we go on the other side, we have the cozy girl job. We have something that’s recurring, something that’s retainer based. If you’re a freelancer, this is, you have clients that are on a retainer contract and if they don’t want to work with you, if they have to stop the contract, they have a 30 days notice.
So you still have that extra month to find another client. Or this is a full time remote job. This is self made pricing or this is above minimum wage growth opportunities. This is remote, this is a few hours of work a day or week, and if you’ve ever read The 4 Hour Workweek, it’s the principle of this.
Getting the remote job is the first step of getting to this cozy girl job, this cozy creative job, this cozy artist job. We want to get ourselves into that. out of the physical constraints not just because it’s emotionally exhausting, but because the time it takes you to go to this job, spend all that time there and come back, it’s impossible to work on your art.
Or if you are somehow able to work on your art there, you can’t fully be in it because you’re physically on call for someone else, if that makes sense.
The cozy girl job it’s recurring, it’s ongoing, it’s you’re getting money every month, if you’re a freelancer, you can make your own pricing. You can give yourself raises, this is above minimum wage. You’re getting paid a yearly salary remotely. So you can figure out how do I. batch. How do I create systems so that I can work less, but I’m still outputting the same amount. This weird convention that we’ve all said that we have to shuffle papers from 9 to 5. But for some reason, if you have to leave early, if you have to leave at 3pm, somehow you can get all the work done.
It’s just we find time to fill. We find ways to fill that time when we really don’t need to.
So, there are these two types of income streams. And if you are filling this creative block, if you feel like the tension’s coming from this career element, think about what type of income stream you have.
💕 Let’s Combat Blocked Creativity Together.
You might be still in a starving artist job where you could transition into a cozy girl job, The starving artist job. Tension, right? This is the tension. The cozy girl job, this is freedom. You have the freedom to work when you want. You have the freedom to work where you want.
You have the freedom to make the money that you want. This is ultimately the solution for feeling tense. You have the creative block, you’re feeling tense, the solution is to find ways to turn this tension into areas of freedom.
We’ve talked about freedom in our home, freedom of having the colors we want, of having a bunch of different shapes, freedom of bringing more sunlight in to give us energy. We talk about freedom in our body, the freedom To let our body move, feed our bodies what we need to thrive. And we talk about freedom in our careers, the freedom to make the money we want, to work when we want, where we want, how we want.
This is the solution to this tension. By the way, if you’re enjoying this video, I would love it if you subscribed and joined the little community. I hope you like it and you’re groovy. Anywho.
When you’re feeling that creative block, think about the three lifestyle muses that this can fall into, your home, your body, or your creative career. .
And then ask yourself, how can I turn this from a source of tension into a source of freedom?
And you might actually find that it’s a lot simpler than you think.
I hope you find freedom in your art today, and I will see you next time. Bye!
