How to Work Through the Creativity Struggle

The more I get older, the more I realize that I’m struggling with my sense of creativity. As a perfectionist, yet procrastinator, I feel like many of my ideas are stifled or that I’m lagging in my creative senses and processes.  

Creativity is so necessary to our everyday lives whether it’s brainstorming research ideas or working on art projects. To get ahead these days, you need to be creative and have new ideas but when you feel like you have a perpetual sense of writer’s block or can’t hone in on your creative lens, it’s a struggle. 

I feel like I have gotten to this place where I’m struggling with formulating creative ideas and outlets for a few reasons. The first is due to school. When you’re focused on studying and getting good grades it can be hard to have time to brainstorm and listen to creative ideas when you’re in a time crunch. And again, my perfectionism and procrastination tendencies come out, making it even harder to think of new or simply good ideas, so I end up just working on projects that I had to think of at the last minute.  

The second reason is due to social media. Social media just isn’t fun anymore. We’re constantly bombarded with ads and algorithms create such a specific echo chamber of ideas that I feel like I’m learning and listening to the same information repeatedly. Social media also creates this intense pressure to create new pieces of content so that you can break through the noise and go viral, or even just break through the noise of cluttered feeds so that your friends can see your posts.  

In my new attempt to get over the creative struggle one of the things I want to prioritize and emphasize for others is consuming less. Or at least consuming fewer social media and being more intentional on using it. It’s so easy to fall into the trap because it feels mindless and like a break from other, more tasking activities like homework, but instead it makes your mind a lot more cluttered and harder for your individual creativity to break through. 

Another way I want to break through this cycle is by reading more and scheduling time to be creative whether that’s through drawing, painting, brainstorming, the list goes on. In doing this, there’s more of a mindful break from things rather than mindless.  

Whether you need to be creative for work or school or have writer’s or artist’s block, creativity is necessary to everything we do, and it can be a struggle to harness it. Therefore, by giving myself and ourselves the time and grace to think and create, it can help us in many ways.  

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• #creativity
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