A lot of creative people are often intimidated by the magnitude of their own work. Contending with perfectionism, self doubt, and the overall difficulty of creating anything of value can prevent many would-be geniuses from ever expressing themselves, thus disallowing anyone to ever bask in the beauty of their work or even the creator granting themselves the glory of the act of creating in the first place.

I’ve noticed really creative people are very anxious a lot of the time, especially when they haven’t created for a while. It gives them anxiety how hard it is to get back into something they had long since abandoned, and then it feeds into the cycle of avoiding it even more and building the anxiety even more and more as well.

Today, I’m going to provide some advice that I’ve been reluctantly, but fruitfully taking myself, and I hope that despite of how hard it sounds to do, I hope you try it on and share your experience with me. The top three things anxious creators need to learn are:

1. Anxiety is Unspent Energy
2. The Results of Releasing That Energy
3. How to Recharge and Harness That Energy

Anxiety is Unspent Energy

Creators are often anxious because the creative project that nags at them at the back of their heads is simply built up energy that is being left unspent. It’s not negative, per se, but it can definitely weight on you the longer you procrastinate on something you know that’s in you to express. Creators have something to express through their work and not allowing themselves the privilege can lead to a whole lot of anxiety.

It’s easier said than done, but you really just gotta go do damn the thing in order to spend that anxious energy wisely. Otherwise, the months and years will go by and maybe from time to time people will ask you “how’s that book coming along?” and you’ll be hard pressed to come up with a better excuse than the one you gave them five years ago as to why you still haven’t published it, let alone began writing it in the first place.

If this sounds like you, I highly suggest you get over yourself and the prospect of what others think, and just get to work on the thing you know you need to do. There’s a locked up emotion in you, be it anger, sadness, or even joy, and not expressing any of that emotion through your art is gonna lead to a psychological blockage until you get it done.

As creators, we generate themes and ideas in our hearts and minds all the time, and while it may not be possible for everyone to create an endless library of work that expresses every last theme and idea they want to express, it’s the very act of trying to do so that will lead to a much more fulfilling creative life than it would be to just not challenge yourself at all.

And that’s what we really need. We’re already making things hard for ourselves by anxiously thinking about that thing we know we need to be creating, so you might as well lean in to that difficulty by allowing yourself the privilege of being challenged by your own work. Creative work is not easy and it is not always fun, but believe me when I say it’s always a damn good time once you get to the other side of it.

The Results of Releasing That Energy

Another thing creators tend to contend with is simply feeling relief rather than pride upon completing a project. If you’ve turned your novel, painting, or song into something you “just need to get done,” then you’ve turned it into a chore, and it’s definitely no accident that chore rhymes with bore. Art can be difficult, but it should never be boring.

The frustration is normal because you are challenging yourself to create something with your full potential tapped into it, and with each passing project, you should be stretching your growth-edge further and further so that you can continue the ongoing growing pains that come with creating art. But just because it’s frustrating and isn’t always as easy, fun, and free flowing as it can be when you’re randomly motivated, it doesn’t mean it should be boring.

I’ve recently had the experience of choosing to “phone it in” with the fifth draft of It Starts at Home. The first three acts of the book, I wrote valiantly and with joy, but the last two acts, I started to just rush through it and wanted it over and done with rather than taking my time to enjoy the process. While the novel is technically done, it’s not at the quality I know that it deserves and the it’s certainly not at the quality that I could personally be happy with. Especially considering the 10th year anniversary of that novel’s conception will be in just a few months as of writing this blog post.

No matter how frustrating and elongated the creation process is, we must never disparage its place in our lives, and always remember what we’re trying to express through it, as well as honouring what it’s trying to teach us. Just because we come into a project with the intention to potentially teach others about a revelation we may have had, it doesn’t mean the project won’t surprise you in its creation process and give you something even more profound than whatever you intend to provide to your audience.

So in releasing that energy, remember to honour your art for what it is and not resent it for the difficulty it may give you. And you certainly don’t want to resent it for not garnering the views, likes, or even profit it fails to deliver because that’s kinda like having children you hate. Sure, they turned out crappy and no one likes them, but whose fault is that? It’s your responsibility to do the best you can with the knowledge you have, and have the trust and faith that no matter what missteps you may have taken along the way, that you’ll always have the opportunity to do better next time.

How to Recharge and Harness Creative Energy

Now here comes the slightly controversial part. When it’s all said and done, give yourself a huge break and turn your brain off a little bit. We’re not built for constant and consistent conscious use of our mental cognition. While I think a lot of brain fog can and will clear once we do the things we often procrastinate on, especially by engaging in mindless activities like scrolling through social media, it is actually that kind of mindless activity that can allow us to recharge after giving an artistic project our all.

Just don’t mess with the order, of course.

A lot of creative people are tempted to consume other art or even turn their brains off before they decide to sit down and right. Hell, before I wrote this blog post, I procrastinated for an entire hour before I sat down and decided it was time to write for the next four hours in the afternoon. What did I do? I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, almost all of which I didn’t even watch into completion. My excuse? I need to wake my brain up.

But writing this blog post is actually part of a big experiment that I’ve been trying out on myself and the hypothesis seems to be correct:

If you suffer from brain fog and anxiety, challenging yourself to do difficult things can actually clear all of that away, if not a huge portion of it. Before I decided to write today, I spent a couple hours debating myself over whether I even should write today. “I’m tired, though,” I rationed to myself. “I didn’t enjoy my weekend enough, so why not one more day?”

Because then I would have lost the energy I had today to write in my journal, to write this blog post, and write a script for a short film!

For the longest time, I thought that playing video games and watching movies felt better after getting some work done because I earned it by being productive. But that’s not what it’s really about. It has nothing to do with any moral licensing and earning anything, rather it’s more of a matter of mental activation.

I’m starting to realize lately that video games and movies are more enjoyable after getting some work done because writing demands all of my mental faculties and so I am forced to turn my brain on in doing so. Even if it feels like a drag the first few minutes, once I get going, I really get going. Video games and movies are passive activities, and while you do require some cognition and input for video games, it’s still reacting to spoon-fed stimuli, whereas creating a piece of art requires your full cognitive attention.

The brain wants to work in full activation. It needs to be depleted before being open to replenishment through entertainment.

CONCLUSION

If you’re a creative person with a whole lot of anxiety, just remember life is too short to leave your emotions unexpressed. Answer the project that calls to you so that you’re in a calm and civil conversation with it instead of having it become the thing that screams for your attention at the back of your mind for days, weeks, months, or even years on end.

Once you get to it, remember to honour it for its value to not only your potential audience, but to you as the creator having the intimate experience of being challenged by it and conquering that challenge by honing in on all your training and built up skill you intend to display through it. Chores turn into bores, so remember to enjoy the process even when it gets difficult.

And finally, allow yourself some passive consumption of art, social media, or anything else to give your brain the rest it needs. In a future post I’ll talk about the importance of active recreation, but for now bask in the permission to waste some time away. Not because you’ve “earned” it, but because you’ll just be giving your brain the variety and novelty it needs in shifts between the active and passive use of it.