Overcoming Avoidance

Creative Avoidance is a normal part of the creative person’s life. It presents itself in many ways, and until we get to know ourselves well in the creative process, we may not recognise it very well as it can be quite subtle! Mostly though, we can identify our avoidance tactics by realising that we haven’t got on with our project as we planned and we can’t see a good reason why.

But it’s ok because once we are aware of our tactics, we can choose to say no to them, and get on with our plan. By the way, these tactics can range from re-sharpening your entire colour pencil set to taking up a job you said you’d never do!

This main thing to remember is that avoidance in creativity exists, and we should allow it to exist because from time to time you will be able to analyse it to find out what exactly you are avoiding. That reason could be anything from boredom to a particularly difficult problem. Once the self awareness is switched on, you can take steps to resolve the avoidance issue. Things that help are:

• Patience with yourself
• Allowing, not forcing the project to grow
• Nurturing your creative side
• Keeping attentive to your environment
• Keeping in touch with other creative people
• Understanding your personal concept of success
• Allowing yourself free time
• Walking through the experience
• Feeling the fear and doing it anyway
  

Whatever happens, be resourceful so that you can find solutions to problems at every stage. Often the life of a creative person can be isolating and it’s important to remain connected to the community of your speciality. Remember, most of all, we all have the answers to our difficulties at our fingertips and it’s up to us to choose the path of solution. Working SMART (previous blog) will help you to self-coach your way to the answers and method to achieve your goal.

Good luck, and I'll see you in 2 weeks, where we'll tackle a tricky subject - the perception of success.