Be More Creative - 7 Ways You're Choking Your Creativity - And What To Do Instead

By Dan Goodwin

Often, it doesn't matter how much you're doing to try to be more creative, if you're constantly sabotaging and choking our creativity on a number of different fronts. Here are 7 of the most common ways you may be choking YOUR creativity, and what you can do instead:

1. You don't create regularly.

When you create erratically, you never give yourself the chance to get into the flow and the habit of creating. By creating for a minimum amount at the same time everyday, you give your creativity permission to be creative and send the clear message that creating is something that is a priority and of great importance to you. Your creativity responds and flows like never before.

2. You don't capture your ideas.

When it feels like you never have any good ideas, what's actually happening is you never record your ideas and forget them as quickly as they came. Use an Ideas Journal - simply a small pocket notebook to jot your ideas down when they appear - and soon you'll have more ideas than you can capture!

3. You don't acknowledge you creative strengths.

We're each unique in our creative strengths, so rather than focusing on what you feel you lack, recognise and celebrate your creative strengths. What would a good friend of yours say if they were asked what your biggest creative strengths were? Write them all down and make the most of them.

4. You let your inner critic have the last word.

We all have negative voices in our heads telling us we're not good enough, or we have no talent. You have the choice whether to be dictated to by these kind of thoughts or whether to tune them out as background noise and carry on creating the best you can create anyway.

5. You intimidate yourself with too many materials.

A classic cause of getting stuck creatively is to simply give yourself too many options then get completely overwhelmed. Set a few simple boundaries in the form, size, style, theme and so on of what you're going to create. When your creativity has a few edges to push against, it can really be at its resourceful best.

6. You've lost touch with why you create.

When creating has been a struggle for some time, and you only have negative associations with creating, it's easy to get demoralised. Spend time getting back to why you create, and remembering what it is that creating gives you that nothing else can.

7. You forget you always have a choice.

In every part of creating, you have a choice, though it's easy to forget. You can choose to make time each day to create, you can choose to acknowledge creativity as the important element in your life it is, and you can choose to give yourself permission to be as creative as you can possible be. Choose creativity!

Which of these resonate most for you? What steps can you take today to loosen that stranglehold and let your creativity breathe freely again?

Take the next step to increase your creativity today by getting your copy of Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin's powerful and practical "Explode Your Creativity!" Action Workbook. It's FREE when you sign up to the FREE twice monthly ezine "Create Create!" at www.CoachCreative.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_Goodwin