Is Creative Block Just Part of Your Process?

Copyright (c) 2009 Valery Satterwhite

Blocked! Words are not spilling onto the page; color choices elude you; you can't embody the character you've been chosen to portray. Simply put, you're stuck! It's not the first time you've been stuck and certainly not the last if you're a creative being. In your stuck-ness you beat yourself up, and often others, in your frustration and anxiety over your creative blocks. You worry that you may not have another creative thought, an inspired moment, ever again! Your life will be over! Argh!! And you resist your stuckness only to give your power over to it allowing the struggle to grow large blocking your vision, your expression, your talent, your gift to the world. Double ArrrggghhhH!!!

"Being true to yourself is what feeds creativity, not self-doubt and criticism." - Diane Arenberg

Did it ever occur to you that you were trying too hard to get over your artist, your creative, block? What if your seemingly blocked moments were just pauses in your creative process? What if the pause is a call to you to replenish your energy, feed your creative soul, with what it enjoys, what it plays with? What if this pause was opportunity calling?

"An inconvenience is an unrecognized opportunity." - Confucius

Instead of resigning to the possibility that you're washed up as an artist, consider that you are merely making a pit stop. Pit stops are essential to any Formula One race champion and you are absolutely a champion! You are a master, endowed with unique gifts and talent, here to express your full potential. Pull into the pit stop and refuel!

I can hear your Inner Critic screaming now! "If I stop, pull out of the race even for a moment, others will pass me by!". Nonsense! Others will require pit stops as well. Besides, they're not running the same race you are. They're not creating YOUR masterpiece. They are in the process, the race, to create theirs as you are yours. The only one you're racing against is your very own Inner Critic who has no idea where he's going or how to get there. He is hopelessly lost begging you, your Higher Self or what I playfully call the Wizard Within, to take over the lead.

"Creation is such an elusive thing, for the more we think we are in control, the more we remove ourselves from the actual creation." - Betty Jean Billups

Recognize that you've paused and allow the pit stop experience to unfold. Let if flow naturally without restraint. What you resist, persists. If you resist being blocked, your block will persist. If you embrace where you are in the process the process will continue to move forward, you will naturally replenish your energy that serves your intuition and inspiration. Before you know it you will pull out of the pit stop inspired and firing on all cylinders!

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