IT’s a plumbing Problem

If we turn on the tap in our kitchen only to discover the water is not flowing freely, rarely do we jump to the conclusion that water simply doesn’t exist.

Usually, we recognise it as a problem with the pipes. Some sort of blockage interrupting the natural flow of water.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

In this particular scenario, you are the tap and the water is your creativity. The tap is not broken. The water exists. The problem lies somewhere in between; in the pipework, the channel.. If you want the water to flow freely again, you have to deal with what’s blocking the pipes.

The challenge is not that your creativity is absent.

The challenge is that it’s being obstructed.

Typically associated with the struggling artist, there is an almost romanticism attached to creative blocks; the frustrated novelist unable to write another word, the lyricist staring hopelessly at their empty notebook, the musician strumming that same chord, the painter staring at their canvas all hoping inspiration will strike.

Rarely do we think of creative block as being more commonplace than that. Something we can all be afflicted by, even if we don’t consider ourselves creative. In fact, not thinking you’re creative is perhaps one of the biggest blocks you’ll have to contend with.

If creative blocks are not solely reserved for artists, and not limited to a lack of inspiration, what are they?

Well, for a start, painful. And deeply painful when we realise what’s at stake if we can’t move beyond them.

A creative block is anything obstructing the pathway to your creativity, stopping it from flowing freely.

They come in all sorts of weird and surprising guises and sizes, which makes them particularly hard to recognise. And so, they sit in our blind spot, hiding in plain sight, never really seen for what they are on account of never being recognised as creative blocks in the first place.

Unable to see the very thing standing in our way, we just keep banging into them repeatedly feeling like we’ve hit a wall and reached the limits of our creative capabilities when all we’ve really reached is a creative block.

Unchecked, they become hazardous to our creativity as we go on believing we’re not creative enough. Not because it’s true but because we’ve never managed to navigate beyond our blocks to find out that it’s not.

This is why we need to deal with them. Head on.

Creative blocks don’t suddenly appear overnight; they are made gradually over time, typically originating from an external factor; childhood, parents, schooling, society or simply the social conditioning we’ve all been raised in and exposed to.

For some people the origins of their creative blocks are unknown. They are not created in one single event but through a series of nondescript moments that gradually build up over time, so subtle and discreet we might struggle to credit them for having any lasting impact on our creativity.

For other people there might be one very clear origin, perhaps a particular event or memorable experience that shifted how they thought about their creativity and subsequently how they went on to experience it.

Even if the origins of a creative block begin as external ones, they don’t tend to stay that way for very long because we internalise them.

A transfer happens. We either take on that same conditioning, adopting it as our own perspective, or that perspective alters the value we place on our creativity.

The external begins to influence the internal.

We attach emotions to these thoughts or vice versa. We build stories around them that create more emotions. We have more emotions that we need to rationalise and justify and so we create more stories.

Without knowing it, the only thing we end up creating are blocks.

Blocks that are growing bigger all the time because we unintentionally keep feeding them.

This is where things get really dangerous because not only are we feeding our creative blocks, as they grow, they begin to feed themselves too.

A reinforcing cycle begins between our internal world and what’s being reflected back to us through our lived experiences in the external one, only serving to strengthen and reinforce our beliefs.

Our beliefs become behaviours and our blocks get bigger.

And this is what we’re contending with.

Over time they become contaminated with confusion.

What might have started as misunderstanding or social conditioning eventually shows up as creative comparison, self-censorship, resistance, perfectionism, fear of judgement, fear of being seen, fear we haven’t got what it takes and ultimately, creative paralysis.

Where and how they first came to be becomes less important.

What matters now is that we can see these blocks for what they are.

Only then can we see what’s obstructing our path.

Only then can we find a way beyond them.

Only then can we expect the tap to work and our creativity to flow freely.