In a bid to stay ahead of our targets we plan and work daily. We stretch our creative muscles to their limits coming up solutions along the way.
However, inasmuch as we try to come up with creative answers to our daily life questions, there are a number of factors that hamper the free flow of our creative energy thus defeating us at the problem – solving battlefield.
Although these factors are dangerous – capable of killing our problem – solving prowess, many people don’t know them and this further reduces their chance of defeating these enemies. You can’t easily defeat a mask (unknown enemy).
Well, not anymore as in this blog post I shall unmask a handful of them.
Without much further adieu, here are:
Five enemies of your creative muscles
1. Self-doubt: this is the foremost of all the factors. Self-doubt triggers the inner critic who invalidates our aim of creating. It queries – “who gave you the right to solve this problem?” It induces fear of failure, fear of rejection and all sorts of other fears. These fears take away our confidence and thus beats us off course.
2. Perfectionism: those of us who get beyond the self-doubt and defeats the inner critic are soon met by another militating factor. As creative beings we hate imperfect work and thus are often discouraged or even stopped from creating by imperfections. Pursuing perfection is not bad in itself as we can run into excellence. But sticking to perfection or nothing is dangerous as it could bring about an unhealthy obsession.
3. Negating Environment: we are all functions of our environment. This means that even though we exert influence on our environment, we’re also influenced by it. A negative environment is full of pessimism and negates any iota of creative sense from us. This dulls our creative muscles and leaves us creatively poor and unable to stay on course for creative solutions.
4. Procrastination: self-doubt, perfectionism and a negative environment all lead to postponement of the problem solving process. Procrastination comes as an ultimate blockage of our creative energy flow. It provides ready-made excuses for not doing it now. It discourages us from creating making us see less and fewer reasons for which we need to solve the current problem. It thus is an enemy of creativity as it stops us from creating.
5. Inconsistency: this is a coronary of all the above. It links up well with each of them. It is the biggest enemy of creativity. Inconsistency prevents us from regularly exercising our creative muscles. This exercise sharpens our creative muscles without them we get creatively dull and lose our ability to come up with creative solutions.
Ending Notes
The first step to solving any problem is recognising it. Zip Ziglar says it better:
“You can’t hit a target you cannot see and you cannot see a target you do not have.”
Now you know five dangerous things that dull our creative muscles. Whenever you feel creatively down, it is one or more of them that is in action.
I shall write a sequel to this post where I shall discuss how to fight these creativity killers.
Question: What’s your experience with creativity killers? Tell us in the comments section.
Amoson Writes 