Did you know doing A LOT of creative work–if you handle it the wrong way–can actually LEAD TO resistance and creative block?

Fortunately, there’s a secret to avoiding–or ending–procrastination, resistance, and creative block. 

And guess what? It can actually be simple and easy. 

It doesn’t have to take years of inner work. 

(NOTE: There is absolutely a place for inner work, and you DO have to do it to reach your highest potential as an artist.

However, if you’ve been avoiding your art, you can actually turn that around in less than a week. EVEN IF it’s been YEARS since you did your art. (!!!))

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Let’s talk resistance–and how your creative work habits can inadvertently cause it. 

The best way to do your art is to do as much as you can in a sitting, right? To mine your creativity, dig deep, bring it all up and out. To go and go until you feel done, complete, and satisfyingly empty. Yes?

Actually, no. 

You see, creation is about desire. It’s the urge to create something where there was nothing… the impulse to fill a space with something that comes from your soul.

And so, if you mine your depths until you’re completely empty, then turn around the next day and start again… what happens? 

There’s nothing left to create from. 

As creative people, we always need to fill the well. Rest and play fill the well. Contemplation and open exploration fill the well. 

If we work and work, until our creative urge is exhausted, we drain the well.

We kill the desire to create.

And then we’re left high and dry.

Now, there are certain times when it IS right to go and go, to follow the energy until we’re complete. But you have to know when those times are, and when to stop and fill the well again. 

Also: Those times when it’s right to go and go until you’re DONE are the EXCEPTION, not the rule.

If you want to do your creative work regularly and easily, here’s what to do: leave each session hungry. 

Hungry to write or paint or do more. Hungry to take the next step. Hungry for the next day.

With my clients, we pay a lot of attention to creative hunger–and creative drive. 

We figure out exactly how to set up their work sessions (when, how often, how long, how to begin and end), to make sure their work is INCREASING their creative drive.

If you have trouble doing your creative work, you might be managing your creative energy in a way that DEPLETES or MESSES UP your creative drive. 

You know what it looks like when your creative drive is depleted or messed up:

• A cycle of avoidance, justification, guilt, shame… and more avoidance
• Endless picking at yourself and beating yourself up. Critical voices that make it hard to create anything!
• A dull, dry, or flat feeling about your work (it all looks boring, clichéed, and bad)
• Fear that if you try, you’ll just fail and let yourself down again

Here’s what it looks like when you manage your creative energy the right way:

• You start your creative work easily each day
• You show up powerfully for each creative session
• You recognize bumps and roadblocks for what they are, and you know exactly what to do to navigate them (and you do it!)
• You end each session feeling energized—and eager for your next session
• Your momentum, success, and confidence are growing each day
• All those small and then big professional goals… the publications and showings and performances, the agents and money and awards… start to HAPPEN 

And it all comes from this foundation: understanding how to manage and direct your creative energy so you can do your art regularly and easily.

Interested in support that will help you do exactly this? Email me and let me know!

Being an artist in action means doing your creative work each work day. And, it means a lot more. 

It means you get to have the rest of your day, guilt-free. Instead of guilt and unrealized dreams hanging over your head, you feel accomplished. Satisfied. Fulfilled.

When you see the wonder of a low-hanging orange moon or the goofy happiness of a child’s joke, you can connect straight to it (without pushing through a general miasma of bad feelings about yourself).

If you’re an artist, being in action is like making payments on your home.

Your daily life is your home. It’s the environment you live in.

If you avoid your creative work–and you don’t get the resistance handled–it’s like piling expenses onto on a home equity loan, day after day, year after year, and never paying it down.

It pushes your career as an artist further and further into the future. (And, yes, if you don’t take care of it, you *will* run out of time.)

In the meantime, like unhandled debt, procrastination creates stress that seeps into every area of your life: your marriage, your time with your kids, your daily experience. 

(Ever been irritable or resentful with your family because you didn’t do your writing or art that day?)

Avoiding your creative work leaches away at your self-confidence, energy, and general momentum in life. (And yes, it’s leaching away at your ability to make money too.)

But if you’re in action? 

Every day you do your creative work is an investment in yourself: a deposit in an account that’s building interest and growing–even while you live the rest of your life.

And, when you’re an artist in action, your investment builds on itself: 

People share your work on Instagram and YouTube. Readers email you about how your art changed their lives. Editors notice your piece in an anthology and reach out. Colleagues invite you to read with them. Conference organizers ask you to speak. 

In short, action creates opportunity.

Possibility.

Expansion.

Confidence.

Joy.

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Want support with being an artist in action?

Email me.

There IS a way to get over your procrastination—even if you’ve tried and failed many times.

Even if it’s been ten years since you created anything.

Even if you have a day job, a family, or very limited time.

Here’s a scene you might recognize:

It’s the end of a workshop you took to get over your fear and resistance.

You’re alight with insight, your mind and heart blown open.

It’s like you’re at the top of a mountain, breathing clear fresh air and seeing so far.

The closing circle is filled with tears, connection, gratitude. And you leave with incredible clarity and confidence.

When you return to your regular life, you feel strong, energized, and determined, and you’re doing your art. Your confidence climbs.

Then you hit a bump. Family things come up, you have extra work at your day job, you get sick, or you just need a break one day. Your momentum stops, your confidence slips a little.

Bit by bit, in the face of LIFE, the high from your workshop fades and things return to how they were before.

This happened to me, over and over. It happened with therapy, self-hypnosis, counseling… all manner of transformational and healing work.

Over time, I came to realize: these approaches didn’t work long-term because they were missing a fundamental piece of how we change our habits.

Imagine this:

You’re climbing a mountain, and people come to help you. They cheer you on, they help you see what’s been slowing you down, and they help you heal a fear of heights (or falling, or being a mountain climber)…

They even project a holograph of the mountaintop view and lift you up into it so you can experience what it’s like to reach the summit.

You’re energized, ecstatic, transformed. You feel like you could climb ten mountains.

Then they leave, and you lose momentum.

That’s because you can’t climb a mountain with just your emotions, energy, and mindset.

Taking actual, physical steps is what gets you up the mountain.

BUT, if you’re dealing with a lot of self-criticism, negative thoughts, and blocks, you can’t take those steps, right?

So, how DO you go from avoiding your writing or art… to doing it easily and regularly?

You need to combine inner “transformation” and action-taking… in a very specific way.

There’s science behind this. You see, our “lizard brains” (the oldest part of our brain, responsible for primitive survival instincts) are wired to recreate the familiar because it’s survivable. 

When we change old habits (ie, when we go from avoiding to creating), we leave the familiar “safety zone”—and our system unconsciously pushes us to return to the old, avoidant ways. (Self-sabotage, anyone?)

Only by creating a new reality—and having our systems experience this new reality as safe—can we rewire ourselves.

So, if you’re going from not-creating to creating, the most effective way is to

(1) Clear enough blocks so you can create

(2) Create enough art to experience yourself as an artist

(3) Let that new experience register in your nervous system and body, and

(4) Continue, working with each successive block (there are usually a bunch!) until your system is adjusted to the new reality:

You, an artist who does your creative work—regularly and easily.

This is what we do in my Artist in Action program. I use specific techniques I’ve learned over the years (and honed with dozens of clients)—to help you fundamentally “rewire” your relationship with your art and creative process.

That’s why my people can break years- or decades-long blocks… AND keep going with their creative work, long after they stop working with me.

If you want this, email me and let me know!!

The last few days, I’ve been writing about fear. So I thought I’d share a piece about fear I wrote years ago, inspired by my older son’s learning how to sit. 🙂

I wrote this in the early days, when every day of working on my business meant starting fear in the face.

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Fear and sitting

I’ve been deep in the middle of work on my “tea stories” and my coaching business. It’s incredibly exciting and energizing. And, at the same time, I’ll be honest–a lot of fear comes up: the fierce fear of failure that comes up when I go for my dreams.

Along with looking fear in the face, I’m watching my baby grow–and out of this mix come certain thoughts.

Sitting

My baby is learning to sit. At first he sat precariously posed like a little frog–his arms and hands splayed out to keep from toppling over. He wobbled there for a moment, and then, in slow motion, tipped over.

Sometimes, after toppling to the floor, he cries. At other times he tumbles over without complaint, only to find himself on his stomach–and then begins to cry.

Feeling

Each time he cries, I remember a lesson I’ve learned over the years: how important it is to feel my feelings. 

Whenever I try to stifle fear, frustration, or other “negative” feelings, they go underground, where they sabotage me in other ways. 

Instead of writing or working on my business, I fritter away time on administrative tasks. I hyperfocus on some minor issue until it drains my emotional energy, read articles on the web for hours, get sidetracked by Facebook, or spend the day “researching” with a barely-relevant historical novel. 

But when I actually let myself feel my feelings, they run through me. I’m borne along in their intensity, drenched in the storm. And then, when the storm passes, I feel a deep, clean calm.

This is what I see in William. When he’s upset, he cries. He doesn’t suppress his feelings. He doesn’t stew. He lets his feelings out, and then he moves on.

Failure

He keeps trying, keeps failing, and keeps learning. As he learns, I learn too. 

There’s the obvious lesson: he’s learning because he’s willing to fail again and again. 

There’s another lesson: even though every attempt to sit ends in failure (he always topples over eventually), in the overall scheme of things, he is succeeding. 

As time passes, he sits for longer and longer without wobbling–longer and longer before he tumbles to the floor. Day by day, he’s transforming from a baby who can’t sit to one who can.

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P.S. When we’re doing our heart’s work, the creative work that’s so close to our soul, fear is right there. So I created Artist in Action–to help you do your writing and art even when you’re up against fear, self-criticism, limited time, and all the things.

Want to hear more? Email me and let me know.

At one point, a client told me she’d realized she’d been living in a cage of fear her whole life. Curtailing her choices. Limiting her behavior. Backing away from her writing when fear reared up.

(See yesterday’s post on the cage of fear.)

She was ready to be done.

There’s a secret to dealing with fear: It’s knowing that fear can be telling you something AND lying to you.

What fear is telling you

Fear is often signaling that there’s something you need to handle.

For example, take a look at your own fear.

Ask yourself: What am I really afraid of?

Maybe as you try to write your novel, you’re flashing back to an angry parent who punished you for “daydreaming” and said you’d never amount to anything.

Maybe you’re afraid your sculptures won’t be good enough—and then you’d have failed at your big dream.

Maybe you have a subconscious fear that if you make it big as an artist, you’ll lose your marriage, family, or friendships.

Maybe you’re afraid the “risky” screenplay you’re writing will bomb, you won’t make any money, and you’ll be out on the street.

Your fear might reveal

• There’s past trauma you need to heal
• You care deeply about a project—and have invested your identity in it
• You’re afraid of losing something you value if you succeed
• There’s a practical consideration you need to make plans for

Fear can help you uncover something you need to handle—so you can release pain from the past, have an important conversation, or take empowering actions.

How fear deceives you

Early in life, you took on fears about doing your soul’s work, being an artist, time, money, responsibility, family, and so much more.

When you face the unknown, those fears will naturally come up. After all, your system is used to responding with those fears.

These fears aren’t necessarily the most logical or likely dangers; they’re the “default fears” installed in you by your past experiences.

In other words, your fear is not the truth. It’s just a habitual way of responding to the future.

It may feel shocking to hear that. After all, didn’t fear just alert you to something important you need to address?

Yes, and by all means, handle it.

And, remember: Fear is not the truth. Fear points at a distortion so you can correct it.

When fear comes up, the Universe is signaling something that needs to be healed or handled.

HOWEVER, if you mistakenly interpret fear as a prediction of the future, your life choices will be based on a deception.

Focusing on the fear itself will keep you stuck.

The way out

Because your fear is not the truth, focusing on it will not free you.

What will free you? Choice and action.

Choose to step out of the cage of fear.

Choose to act as an artist acts.

Choose to do your creative work.

Yes, this may take baby steps at times.

Yes, there will be growth involved, and yes, you may need support.

And, yes, there will also be moments of triumph and power and disbelief at how quickly or easily you’ve created something or discovered an opportunity or achieved a milestone.

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As for my client? After she realized she was caged by her fear, she chose to get free.

And, with support, she’s been blossoming as a novelist. Pushing through creative anxiety. Finishing scenes she’d been avoiding for months. Deepening her craft. And walking in the world with new confidence.

You can do the same.

I believe in you.

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P.S. If you know how important choice and action are, but you have trouble actually doing your art, email me about the Artist in Action program.

It’s designed for ambitious writers and artists who are tired of having their careers dragged down by fear and avoidance.

You’ll get concrete guidance so you can move past the fear, DO your creative work, and have a successful creative career.

Interested? Email me and let’s talk.