How to Drop Your Creative Resistance

Copyright (c) 2009 Valery Satterwhite

The simple truth is creativity functions best when you let go of resistance to the creative flow. Resistance comes in many forms. Anxiety over a creative block is a form of resistance. Finding Excuses And Reasons (F.E.A.R.) for why you cannot or aren't whatever enough to come up with the vision or the energy to create is another face of resistance. Worrying about how you're going to pay your bills or how the critics will view your work is nothing but resistance. Resistance is saying NO! to YOU. It is saying NO to what your heart is calling you to be, do and experience.

Let go of your resistance. Trust. Trust that you can, are 'enough', will be able to keep a roof over your head and handle criticism of any kind. Just drop the baggage of resistance that you've been carrying around with you that makes you too exhausted to get your creative juices flowing. Even if you give yourself permission to let go for only 1 day, just drop it! Drop out of the vicious cycle of artist block and stunted creativity.

"Drop out" suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. It meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.'" -Timothy Leary

When you drop your creative resistance you change your structured path of least resistance. Your current path is mired with fear and self-doubt. When you drop your fear and self-doubt you create a new path; a path that is clear, free from the quagmire of restraints and limitations to your creative flow. You are open to new vision.

"It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it." - Anais Nin

It is very easy to drop your creative resistance. Just be willing. Take a deep breath and begin. It doesn't matter how you begin; just do anything. If you're a painter pick up your brush or knife and choose a color. Put some paint on a canvas and let go. If you're an actor, audition for a role that you think is impossible to win. If you're a writer, write a romantic comedy if your work is largely science fiction. Do something out of your ordinary, out of your comfort zone, and be willing to fall flat on your butt.

"Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day." ~Brendan Francis

If you do create a stink bomb, have a good chuckle over the experience and notice that the fall didn't kill you like you feared it would. In fact, you learned a thing or two about yourself and how you can improve your work. It is in the lessons learned from new experiences that your vision of what's possible for you expands. And laughter will give you distance. Laughter lets you to step back from an event, learn from it and then move onto bigger and better experiences.

Drop the resistant Inner Critic monkey-mind chatter filled with doubt and anxiety. Chuckle and hum a little tune.."I can see clearly now, the brain is gone..."

"The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward." - Joseph Campbell