Tammy Vitale – How to Get Unstuck

In this post from her Women, Art, and Life blog, Tammy Vitale offers ways to help overcome creative blocks. Here is an excerpt:

“1. Recognize you aren’t alone or the only one.

Tama Kieves offers us a look you may recognize – and since you recognize it, you know that at least she, if no one else (do you really believe it’s just you and her?) understands the crazy cycle of creativity called life.
Tama’s Diary of a Creative Mind:

Week one: Get a creative idea and the slightest bit of encouragement and feel on top of the world, burning, singing, dancing and feeling as though it all makes sense now and everything will come together. You are magnificent. You will be rich. Life is so beautiful. You will never be stopped. How could you have ever dobted?

Week Two: Get a cancellation from a client or a form letter back from your proposal, query, or inquiry and feel the world is harsh, cruel, sick and scary. “Reality” sinks in. This will be hard. This is not easy. This will take a lot of work, time and adjustments to your personality. Your therapist might not be that good. You may just be too old. You may just be too tired. You may just be too sensitivie, like your family said.

Week Three: Turn on television and have a love affair with chocolate, Cheetos, cookies and guilt. Notice how thin the leading women are. Notice how the celebrities are getting even more famous and fabulous. They are thin. Many of them look like they are fourteen. Many of them are fourteen. Notice how you haven’t moved from the couch in about six hours……..

2. Practice imperfection

Read a little of Anne Lamott. Wait. Read a lot. Often, stuck = fear of imperfection. Here is a woman who is out there in all her radiant (and successful) imperfection. Do you think people love reading her because she’s different than the rest of us? No – we read her because we recognize – and get permission to be only and just – ourselves. Here’s a bit of Anne:

Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. clutter is wonderfully fertile ground – you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip. Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it’s going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, or suspended animation. (from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

Here are the two best prayers I know: “help me, help me, help me,” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” A woman I know says, for her morning prayer, “Whatever,” and then for the eveing, “Oh, well,” but has conceded that these prayers are more palatable for people without children. (from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith)

3. Realize that there are no rules. You can make this up as you go along.

This would be me speaking to you. Long experience studying communities and the art of change has taught me that they who make the rules win. Take back your power. If you need rules, make your own. Base them in your experienced life, and in the integrity of your best self. Don’t worry about everyone else and what they’re doing. Your doing what you came here to do, instead of stewing in a job you hate or a relationship that does not support your being your best and truest self, will make the world a better place. Simply by following your own rules – which of course means following your own heart. Which of course means living life at your most courageous. At least it won’t be boring!”

Click here to read the complete post.

Image in the post is Vitale’s Chasing the Quarter Moon, from her post.