Are you a fan of Halloween? Do you enjoy the scary parts? There are people who get their kicks from the adrenaline rush of fear. Not me
I love Halloween but I don’t like being afraid. I prefer the sugar rush from all the candy, thank you very much.
Being afraid of walking down a dark alley at night is self preservation. Being afraid of doing something connected to your creativity can feel like that too.
Here are 3 tips to help you unmask your fears so you can energize your creativity.
1. Break whatever you are afraid of into tiny pieces and just focus on what you can do for a limited amount of time. If you are afraid of the blank page in a new journal, flip over to the middle or the back and draw a one inch square. Tell yourself you only have to do something in that square for two minutes. Rinse and repeat. Focusing allows you to get past the “big picture” fear and make it more manageable. It also leads us to the next tip.
2. Confidence building is fear-busting. If you are afraid your skills aren’t good enough, take a class, practice, watch videos on You Tube, read a how-to book. Skill building is a necessity of any art. Treating your creativity as a priority strengthens resolve, makes your art more valuable and sends a message to both external and internal critics that you take your art practice seriously.
Our internal critics try to make us believe that we should be born knowing how to do things. If we are so creative, why don’t we how to mix paint intuitively?
3. It is important to begin to recognize the spooky lies we have rattling around in the closet of our mind. Fear is Blockhead’s (the name of my internal critic) weapon of choice to keep us from being who we really are doing what we really love to do.
When Blockhead says you will be ridiculed if you share your work to a Facebook group, check it out so you know the truth. Are others routinely ridiculed? The artist groups I belong to on Facebook are very supportive and encouraging. If you can’t decide if what Blockhead says is true, ask a trusted friend. (Hint): If Blockhead is whispering in your ear, he is usually lying.
I hope these tips will help you energize your creativity and overcome your fears. Save the scary stuff for Halloween.
Cheering You Artfully On,
Diana