Conquering a strange block to Creativity

 

When I started blogging well over a decade ago, I had a strange problem. I would have a blog post idea in mind with the content figured out, but I would not post it. The post was in my thoughts all day, but I couldn’t get myself to actually write it down and post it.  This was a rather strange sort of reluctance, but after several weeks of it running in my head all day, I figured out the true reason.

You see.. I had only one blog-post idea in mind, and if I were to put that post down, then I would have no ideas left. And the prospect of being left with no ideas for another post, for some bizarre reason I couldn’t quite fathom, made me insecure.

But once I applied this logic to giving a speech, I began to make some sense of this weird subconscious concern of mine, the concern being

“Should I put out my very best ideas in the coming speech? Because if I did that, I would have none left over for future ones “

Do you relate?

We shall return to this concern, but after a small detour.

Humans are known to have thousands of thoughts each day. The vast majority of these are repetitive. And here is why I think that might be the case.

 Say, you need to get something really important done Saturday morning that you are likely to forget. It’s just Monday, you are 5 full days away. So what happens? You know that you don’t want to forget it, and therefore, it will run in your mind all the time until Saturday when it’s finally processed. Once you are done with the important task, your mind needn’t keep track of it anymore. A simple way to not ‘waste’ those 5 days of having repetitive thoughts about the Saturday plan, would be to set a reminder on the phone. With the reminder set up, your mind is free to devote itself to other activities.

 

The key point – unprocessed thoughts are repetitive. They often repeat, because you procrastinate taking action on something that your subconscious mind thinks is important.

 

Are you avoiding an uncomfortable conversation that you’ve been meaning to have, but hesitate to initiate because your mind is worried about a million what-if scenarios? Your mind will keep reminding you to have that conversation. If you procrastinate for a few weeks, your mind will keep trying to remind you. After that, it will label you a coward and leave it at that.

 

Maybe you have been meaning to go on a vacation, but keep postponing the plan. Your mind will keep reminding you of the vacation.. Until you block the dates and book the tickets.

Until we process the thought, our mind behaves like a ‘broken record’ – reminding us of the same thing over and over again.

 

Now, we shouldn’t be surprised if this were true of creative endeavours too. If I put down the first blog post idea soon after it comes to mind, my mind is free to think about ideas for the second one. If I don’t put down the blog post, it goes into my mind’s to-do list, and takes up precious mental bandwidth that is more productively utilized elsewhere.

 

If I give everything I have to the current speech, my mind is free to come with new ideas for the next speech.

 

A mind with an unprocessed idea is like a clogged pipe. You’ve got to execute the idea for more ideas to flow.

Put out every good idea you have. Trust your mind to come up with new ones. Process your thoughts and take action on them. That’s the only way you can keep your mind and thinking fresh.