If you have ever felt the frustration of having a creative or mental block, then you know where my inspiration for this article has come from. It can be hard sometimes to feel like no ideas are good enough, working for you or the brand. It doesn’t have to be creative design or marketing either. It could be on creating plans on how to get your next clients interested or how to be more productive day-to-day.
In this blog, I will be exploring ways to bring your creativity and ideas to the forefront of your mind. This quick blog should help to get you started with moving forward from the mental block you may be experiencing.
Why you may be facing a mental block:
Firstly, there may be many reasons why you are experiencing a creative block. It may be because you are feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, or that you have already used up all of your best ideas. You simply may just be drawing a blank on ideas or how to move forward, and I know how frustrating this can be.
It is important to remember that you are the only you, and all your ideas and thoughts are important. So don’t be scared to try new things to see where it takes you.
How to bring your creativity back:
There are many ways to work through a creative or mental block and ways to encourage new ideas and thoughts to appear. Below are some of the ways that I have overcome my most recent creative/mental block.
01. Play to your strengths
Figure out what your key strengths are and see if there is anything you can work with or use to gain a new perspective or idea. Your strengths are what make you, you, and working with those can help to be the source of exciting new ideas and ways to move forward.
02. Take notes
It is useful to keep a record of the ideas you have, as you can often get them at random times throughout the day or night. So if you have an idea or quick thought, make sure to use a pen and paper or if you don’t have one to hand, use your phone’s notes function. So then if you are falling short of ideas, you have something to look back on and pull new ideas from. Sometimes the best ideas come from the weirdest times and places. This is a useful tip to keep your thoughts in one place written out, as nothing is more annoying than thinking of a great idea and then forgetting it the next day.
03. Brainstorm ideas
Take a moment to sit down and work out a plan, and you may even find that ideas come to you while you are working out what to do and when. Brainstorm your words and thoughts and try to see if you can connect any of them. Some that you may have thought at first were terrible ideas, or insignificant then could turn into a good idea.
04. Change your perspective
Try to work on different tasks and come back to an idea later. This can help you look at your work with a fresh perspective, and you can be more critical or decisive on your thoughts and ideas. It can be stressful, so make sure to allow yourself some breathing room when trying to figure out an idea. You are human, so sometimes you need a second to process and to allow yourself to not think of another task and focus entirely on something else for a while.
05. Bounce ideas
It is always important to get feedback and to bounce ideas off colleges, which can help you to come up with more ideas that you may not have thought of doing. It can even lead to a combination of ideas creating a better one in the process. This method can be beneficial if you are having trouble coming up with new ideas.
06. Change things up
Don’t be afraid to try working in a different space or if that is not possible, perhaps jazz up your desk with things that you feel could spark creativity. Even though it is cheesy try just bringing a smile to your office, this can help you to feel relaxed and for your ideas to run more freely.
07. Finish your ideas
There is no such thing as a bad idea, even if it seems terrible to one person, it always depends on perspective. So what you can do is learn how to work around and adapt to things, even finishing a “bad” idea could lead you to create a better one afterwards, as you know what does and does not work.
Moving forward
With a lot of these steps, you can mix, match and find what works for you. These are just a few steps that have helped me get through my creative, marketing and other mental blocks recently.
At the end of the day, this is a very normal thing to experience. So I hope my words have helped to encourage and inspire you to keep pushing forward and to get creative in any areas of your life.
