Creative Paralysis - the Downfall of Too Many Ideas

Hello, creative souls. Welcome back. Let's talk about being creatively paralyzed.

I don't know about you, but I sometimes suffer from creative overwhelm. If you're reading this, you're probably a creative of some kind of medium. Most of us creatives rarely lack from not having an idea. Instead, we suffer from having too many. If that's you and you get overwhelmed by so many ideas, I call that creative paralysis. When it hits me, I sit there and I'm like, what do I do? And I actually have kind of started to panic or worry because there are so many ideas. Not only do I not know which one to choose, I start to become fearful of how I will ever have enough time or possibility to bring all of these ideas to fruition.

There’s been research on this. Have you ever heard about the jelly thing? If you get two choices of jelly, it's really easy to pick and feel satisfied. If you get 20 choices of jelly, suddenly you don’t know which kind of jelly you want. This is a scientific thing - our brains freak out. I don't know about you, but I've never only had two creative jellies in my mind. I always have at least 20 and probably (realistically) more.

It used to really tug at me… and then one day I kind of had a vision of sorts, a very meditative experience that completely changed this for me and I haven't suffered from creative paralysis since then (or when it starts to sneak its way in, I know what to do with it).

I'm kind of going to guide you through this image that I invite you to use.I would be so honored if like I wasn't the only one using this image and there were all these little creative baddies out there like using it so we can kind of meet each other in the lagoon, if you will. Stay with me. Here's how I protect my creative ideas and here's how I calm myself if I’m freaking out about what to do next. I imagine a beautiful lagoon, a blue pool of water, and it's surrounded by these gorgeous jungle leaves and trees. (If you've seen the background of the photo above, you can guess I love the jungle.) It's this beautiful serene place and it's worldly, but it's so serene it's almost otherworldly. You know what I mean? It's just so gorgeous and ethereal. In this beautiful pool of water, there's all of these spirals, whirlpools of energy. It kind of doesn't make sense because that's not how ponds work, but there's all of these spirals just going in their own way. When you look at them, it's not chaotic. One whirlpool exists over here, and one exists there, and that one's really big, but it exists over here, and there's 15 more over there. There's this calm essence to it. Big, beautiful flowers and lily pads with giant lotuses and it smells amazing. It’s simply a place that you want to be. You want to sit on a lily pad in the middle of the lagoon and just exist with all of these whirlpools swirling around you.

Each of these whirlpools represents a creative idea and/or project. It could be a poem. It could be a new show, a new song, a new painting, a new line of jewelry that you want to do in gold, etc. Whatever it is, all of your different visions is its own unique whirlpool. A few of those, or perhaps just one of those, is no longer just a whirlpool spinning between the surface - it's actually coming up and out, and it's kind of taking this statue-like form. To me, it looks kind of like a beautiful Grecian statue, but made of swirling water. It's in motion, but it's also contained. To me, those are the ideas that I'm giving myself over to.

I'm producing a new show. this show, this one show… not those 20 show ideas, but this one. This is the one swirling out in the water so beautifully. Maybe there's even a couple others that are starting to emerge out of the water, because those are ideas that I'm starting to nurture and play into as I work on this one show. Not only is this imagery so peaceful and beautiful to me, but what it does is it allows all of my creative ideas to be safe and well, and they're protected and alive in the lagoon. These ideas will wait for me patiently, eternally, until I'm ready to give them my full attention. There's no more worry that I'm going to forget an idea and therefore it's going to fall out of existence because I'll never have enough time or resources to do all of them. All of those fears and overwhelming thoughts go away because I know that all of my visions are safe in the lagoon and they will wait for me patiently until I'm ready to give them my fullest attention. Until then, this whirlpool over here is the one that I can give my attention to - really build it, sculpt it, create it and bring it fully to life.

Now, hopefully this vision feels really warm, heartfelt, and serene to you and you're already dumping all your creative ideas into the lagoon to let them spin with that patient energy; but how do we choose which one to build up and bring into being? And do we only choose one?

The easiest way to choose is to follow your excitement. Which one of those many ideas excites you the most? Go in that direction; it’s the easiest way. Your excitement will fuel the energy, the momentum that will help you get creative to find the resources you need to bring the thing to life. I encourage you to follow your excitement.

Now, do we only choose one? You could. There would certainly be nothing wrong with that. Though I do know us creatives be like, "Just one, but I want to do like 18 things."

If that's you, here's how I manage this so I don't feel overwhelmed and disorganized, spread too thin to the point where I can't give my best work to each project. I have project departments. You do too and you might not realize it yet, but we all have departments in our lives. Since I'm an actress, there are multiple roles that I like to play. My biggest whirlpool, the one that's emerging into this beautiful Grecian statue made of water, is usually the one that's going on at my theater. It's the new show that we're producing. It's the core of the work that I'm doing. I'll give the bulk of my work attention to that one thing. Maybe I have a couple other tiny things I've got going on in my work world, but there is a beast, a beautiful beast, that is getting the bulk of my attention.

Not all of my creative endeavors fall into my work life, though. I have other creative endeavors that fall into different areas like my personal or family life. Those are my two other departments, if you will. For instance, in my personal life, here's a big one, actually: one of my biggest creative projects that's just barely starting to bubble up the surface is that I am working to create a private nature reserve in Costa Rica. Yes, that is the acquirement of land so that I can protect it as a nature reserve because, as I mentioned, I love the jungle. That's huge and it's going to take time, but that doesn't mean that I should not start working on it. It actually means, because of its scale, that I should allow it to start bubbling up. It's going to take research, daydreaming, outreach, and lots of learning of how to bring this thing to life. Here's what's cool… the land already exists. The flora and fauna are already there. My dream already exists. So this is really about assembling the pieces and bringing them together, right? Right.

We could actually say this about most of our artwork. All the pieces already exist. Our job as creators is kind of bringing them together. For my theater, my actors already exist. They're beautiful human beings. My idea exists. The theater exists. I’m just assembling them, right? So that's a big one for my personal life. I'm letting it start to bubble above the surface, but when I go into work mode, I'm not working on that one because it’s in a different department. That's something I would save for my personal time. Even if the idea wasn’t such an endeavor, like say I wanted to learn a new makeup technique, that's a small one that I would work on while I'm doing my makeup. My family category right now is kind of a big one for us. My son wants to replace the current playground that we have in the backyard with a pirate ship playground. So exciting. I love this. I don't build stuff really, so this is a big one: we have to learn together how to build a thing. So that's one that I'm keeping in the family department. When I'm immersed in family time, that's one that I'm going to want to do in that timeline. Another one that I might put into that category of family would be the poem I wrote for my husband for our anniversary because that's what I do.

Do you see how the departments start to serve me well? It's not that I can't have more than one creative project going on, it's that this one's in this department, so I work on this when I'm in this department, and that one's in that department, and so on. Now I can manage and organize and not feel overwhelmed by the idea of having multiple creative things going on at once, because they each have a time and a space on the clock and I'm able to manage a handful of them at once. That said, I guarantee you there are many more whirlpools swirling in that beautiful lagoon that aren't getting my attention yet. That's okay because I know where they are. I know they're safe and they'll wait for me eternally.

I invite you to share with me this image that I've built out for you and put your creative ideas into it. Let them spin without your effort or attention. They are there, they are safe. Then I invite you secondarily to examine your own departments. Maybe you just have one. That's fine. If you have several, examine and name those departments, decide what they are, and then you can kind of have a project or two happening in each department at a time. You may become not only satisfied with the sensation of feeling organized, that everything has a time and space, but even more satisfied by going, "Wow, I get to be creative in almost every aspect of my life without feeling overwhelmed or topped out."

That's a wrap, my darling. If you enjoyed today's post, then please do consider diving deeper into the creative pool with me and sign up for the newsletter below.

Now, go do your creative work.