Tag: mental-health

Using Creative Anxiety to Your Advantage

MarlonLeave a comment

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.

The Top 3 Excuses For Not Journaling

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While I may have written quite the beast of a series on journaling last year, I still feel like there’s more to write about in regards to this therapeutic practice. Particularly when it comes to three common excuses people tell me as to why they don’t journal. I don’t mean any of this cynically as journaling is a choice people are free to make, but for the people who say they want to do it, but “can’t,” ie. simply don’t do it, I want to help you get out of your own way and get down to business.

Journaling is not easy, as I’ve said before. It requires you to take a hard and honest look at yourself, and it demands your full attention to really reflect on the thoughts and feelings you have about the events in your life. Some journaling can be easy breezy like simply writing about what you’re grateful for, or keeping track of your progress on a project, but real and soul searching journaling requires cognitive and emotional commitment.

No wonder people resist this simple, yet difficult practice, right? Sounds frustrating and often times it can be. Plus it also feels crazy to be arguing with yourself on a piece of paper, but like as Anne Frank said, “paper is more patient than people.” The biggest gift you can give yourself and to the world is the ability to express your thoughts and your entire being in the most clear and concise way possible, and one of the best ways to achieving that efficiency is taking the time to journal about your thoughts and feelings.

Here are The Top 3 Excuses For Journaling:

  1. “I always forget to journal for a long time and then it’s too late because I can’t even remember what happened a few months ago.”
  2. “I don’t even know what to write and I just get bored because I write about what I ate that morning.”
  3. “I want to, but I don’t have the time for it. I’m just soooo busy.”

To distill these excuses into mere concepts let’s rename them as:

  1. Lacking Memory
  2. Getting Bored
  3. Not Making the Time

Lacking Memory


“I always forget and I can’t remember things from long time ago.”

Unless you’re severely senile or have suffered brain damage, yes, you can. Otherwise, my heart goes out to you and props to you for being able to read this blog post. I say this with compassion, not cynicism.

But to those of you who do have the wonderful privilege of having their mental faculties in tact, you really do need to give yourself more credit rather than claiming absolute memory loss. While the easiest way to journal is to write about your day to day life as it unfolds, there’s also nothing wrong with taking many months or even years away from journaling before you get back to it. Especially if the intention is to write about all the things you’ve experienced from your time away from journaling. Writing about your past is just as important as writing about your present and future.

I’ve had times in my life where I’ve been fortunate enough to not really struggle for a while, and I’ve used those opportunities to reflect on the times I have struggled so that I can learn and grow from them more than the initial experience may have offered at the time. This way I am better equipped to face future challenges or even present challenges if I happen to be struggling at the moment. Either way, my journaling isn’t always as day to day as I’d like for it to be, but I am definitely okay with spending months away from my journal before chronicling my life in epochs whenever I get back to it.

In fact, as of writing this blog post, it is July 2023 (and I am only now posting it in June 2024), but all the things I’m journaling about are from earlier this year. As early as January, I’m writing about how my life has been this year and while most of it is chronological, a lot of it also structured by theme and predicament. Some things happened concurrently with others, while other things happened in a somewhat linear fashion.

How could I possibly remember this? Well, I just sit down and concentrate, thinking about key moments where I felt something strongly or something left an impression on me, and then work from there.

You can too if you just took the time to sit down and think about your life.

That’s all there is to it.

If you think you can’t remember your life from not too long ago, then you’re not thinking or trying very hard. But I promise you, if you decide to simply sit down and crack that journal open, you will remember. Give it some thought. Give it some time. Give it some attention. As you begin to write and recall specific events in your life, you will be engaging your memory bank and everything will come back flooding toward you.

The next challenge is to be able to structure your thoughts and feelings surrounding these past events in a way that at least makes sense to you. Remember, your journal is almost always for your eyes and your eyes only. So who cares if you write in run on sentences or go all over the place chronologically with what you write about? As long as you’re making the connections yourself the best you can and engaging your capacity to remember, that’s all that matters.

If it makes sense to you, then good. If not, then slow down and try to take it one thought at a time.

Getting Bored

“I don’t know what to write so I just get bored.”

I had a friend tell me that she got bored of journaling and eventually stopped after a mere two or three days at it. She said she didn’t know what to write about and got bored, thinking it was silly that all she did was write about what she had for breakfast and all these other mundane day to day things she does throughout the day. And then I figured, yeah, no wonder you got bored, you wrote about boring things!

Try thinking of journaling as a way to dramatize your life like it’s a novel. Rarely ever do you see characters in a novel doing mundane tasks like brushing their teeth or mowing the lawn unless they’re thinking about something important, having an important dialogue with another character, or at the very least revealing the nuance of the character with how they do these day to day activities in a unique way.

Likewise, with yourself, you can even journal about getting frustrated while doing the dishes. Maybe a spec of dirt refused to get wiped off by your sponge. Who ate so poorly as to let these morsels get this dry? Why is this sponge so weak? Why hasn’t anyone in the damn house bought a new one yet? Stupid little questions and frustrations like this, silly and mundane as they may seem, can also lead to some revelations about yourself in regards to what actually sets you off and what you need to do around your home to improve it.

But obviously you will tire rather quickly if you dramatize dumb little things to this degree all the time. What you want to do is write about the big moments in your life, or even the small ones that lead up to them. For me personally, I had one hell of a time journaling about my brother’s wedding last year as I reflected what his marriage brought out in me and my conceptions of love and romance. Where he and his wife shared schmaltzy and heartfelt vows with each other and responded to each other so smoothly, I was involved in a relationship where I wanted to express that same kind of affection, but it was toward a woman who just wasn’t into that kind of communication. That totally gave me a wake up call, making me realize how much of an uphill battle I was fighting at the time.

Hell, even as of today’s journal entry, I wrote about the process it took for me to build my gaming and music production PC. To most people it’s not a big deal. It just a one and done occurrence, but for me it was a gauntlet of self doubt and triumph because it was my first time doing it. Then on top of that, once I somehow managed to build this PC to the point of getting it to run as it should, as opposed to having it explode upon turning it on for the first time, I also had to sell my old PC to my nephew to make space in my room and to make back some of the money I spent on the NEW PC’s parts.

To most people this will look and sound like a convenient sale within the family, but when you dig deeper as I have in my journal entry, I learned that it meant a lot to him to finally have a gaming PC because out of my other gamer cousins and I, my nephew would be the last of us and his friends to get a gaming PC to escape console poverty.

Even the tiniest thing like that can have significance in your life if you look hard enough, but otherwise, you can and always should bank up on some more significant things in your life like a break up or new relationship, a death in the family, or a conflict with a friend as something to journal about and get some revelations from.

Not Making the Time

“I want to journal, but I don’t have time to.”

Yes, you do. If you want to, you will make the time. Proclaiming how much you wanna do it is just blowing hot air and accomplishing nothing. Unless you work a demanding job where you’re on call 24/7, got a spouse and some kids to support, along with a whole lot of other responsibilities to tend to, you have the time to journal. Otherwise, you really need to take a hard look at your schedule and priorities as no one should be living that kind of a constricting life.

If journaling is something you really want to do, then I suggest you get the fuck off your phone, stop binging Netflix, and definitely turn off the evening news, and do something way more productive with your time and journal. You will have a much better time being in quiet conversation with yourself and tracking every thought and feeling as you put pen to paper, much quicker than you would wasting your time on the shit that most people consume on the daily basis.

You do this one thing and you’re already ahead of the curve because most people don’t even stop to think they should journal, let alone engage in any personal development. But ego stuff aside, it is just so much better to live the conscious and purposeful life rather than living life by default. It may feel easier and more comfortable, and living on purpose has its difficulties, but at the end of your life, I guarantee that you’ll wish you made the time for more important things like journaling rather than arguing with idiots online while you take a shit in the morning.