Creative crisis and 10 ways to overcome it

I open a Word file and look longingly at the pristine blank page. I can't write. Nothing. I take the album, thoughtfully twirl the pencil in my fingers and realize that I can’t draw either. I don’t want to knit or embroider. I aimlessly scroll through pages on the Internet, but no information remains in my head.

This is a creative crisis. I think many people are familiar with a similar state, when there seems to be a need to create, but the soul is empty, like a dry well, and just as dark and hopeless. But there must be a way out of this painful state?

Definition of creative crisis

A person’s condition in which it is difficult for him to generate new ideas due to a lack of motivation for creative activity is a creative crisis. A crisis of creativity can have varying degrees of severity: from spending several hours coming up with a new idea necessary to complete professional tasks, to many years of incapacity for work in professions that are of the “Man is an artistic image” type.

Creators are very concerned about the question of why talented people develop such a condition that prevents them from working, and how to overcome it.

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Well, what if you don’t have the opportunity to nurture the idea of a new creation for weeks and you need to literally hand in your work by the morning - write a business plan or a scientific article? How to quickly find the thoughts you need? All creative people struggle with this question. And everyone has their own recipe.

But there are several universal tips, perhaps one of them will suit you.

Allow yourself a little distraction. It's no use hypnotizing a blank sheet of paper waiting for ideas. If there is no inspiration, do work that does not require creative effort: clean up your desk, fill out the necessary documents, make a couple of calls, answer letters. This will give your brain time to generate a new idea for you.
Take a walk. Nothing soothes and fills with inspiration like fresh air and contemplation of nature.
Push yourself with physical activity. If you work in an office, you can jog a couple of laps around the building or do a five-minute exercise with dumbbells while sitting straight in your chair (you can take a couple of weighty reference books instead of dumbbells). The brain will reboot by switching tasks, and you will come out of a creative block.
Rummage through your old notes and materials. Perhaps in them you will come across a great idea that now is the time to implement.
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Look for information on the topic. Sometimes bad things happen because there is a lack of knowledge and texture.
Take "help from a friend." Talking with friends or colleagues can often help you find a new idea.
If you can't write, draw, and vice versa. One type of creativity spurs another.
Brainstorm – throw out everything that’s in your head on paper. Turn off the angry critic in yourself and don’t try to immediately evaluate what you write down. Just write down for half an hour all the ideas that come to your mind. And then read everything you wrote.
Imagine how a genius or any other person whom you consider an authority would handle your work. This exercise helps remove blocks that hinder creative realization.
Use your imagination. Close your eyes for a few minutes and imagine yourself in a comfortable and cozy place where you have everything you need for your creativity - what would you come up with then?
And one more piece of advice for anyone who makes a living with a brush and pen: create for yourself . “Inspiration is not for sale, but you can sell a manuscript,” said Pushkin. Often creativity dies in the pursuit of money. Therefore, it is important sometimes to simply create something for the soul. Just knowing that you are not doing your job for money will become a source of inspiration for you. And who knows, if it can’t be sold now, maybe in the future someone will need exactly what you once created just “for the table.”

Reasons for loss of inspiration in creativity

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The main reasons for a creative crisis are:

Heavy workload, fatigue;
Severe emotional upheaval, stress;
Bad feeling;
Weak motivation for creativity;
Pressure exerted on a person by others through requests to paint a picture or compose music.

Interesting. Studies of creativity as a personality trait have shown that peaks of creativity in people occur once every 4 years. Therefore, after a productive creative period, a quiet phase naturally follows.

Loss of creativity

Where are you, inspiration?

If we are empty, we have nothing to give, then the work does not work.
And you can sit as long as you want, staring at a blank sheet of paper. Until there is energy, there will be no inspiration. We lack the strength to work when we are in a bad mood, emotionally and physically tired. In a word, when something is wrong in our lives, then creativity stands still. Another variant of a creative crisis is a state of emotional stupor. When you have a problem but can't find a solution. Or you’re tired of the daily routine, of the endless “shoulds” and you want to give up everything, go so far away that no one will bother you.

For whom is this a serious problem?

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Creative crisis is a problem for people employed in creative professions, whose work activities involve intellectual stress.

A lack of creative ideas and lack of inspiration disrupt the work schedule. A person lets down customers, as a result of which he receives a reprimand from his superiors. This worsens the mood even more, and a persistent desire to change jobs appears.

Perhaps, dancers, designers, musicians, journalists, fashion designers, and photographers suffer more than others from creative depression.

How to get out of a creative crisis

Oddly enough, creativity helps to overcome a creative crisis. But it is impossible to force yourself to create. It is necessary to create special conditions for self-healing:

Organize proper rest for the body. To prevent psychosomatic diseases, you need at least 8 hours of sleep at night, a balanced menu including vegetables, fruits, meat, and fish. Walking in the fresh air and organizing a picnic with relatives or friends are also useful. Meaningful leisure will help normalize your state of mind and give you new images and impressions.

Important! For creative impasse, novelty is destructive. You don’t need to go to distant lands for new experiences – they are nearby. To notice them, you just need to get up from your desk, go outside, and look around.

Change of environment. Sometimes the muse does not visit the creator’s home because everything in his house is predictable: a table littered with papers, a palette stained with paints, the same palm tree in the corner by the chair. Familiar surroundings and lack of freshness in the interior are reflected by a lack of freshness in thoughts. General cleaning and rearrangement will help get rid of excess clutter, adding new accessories to the interior will bring new trends into your thoughts.
Physical activity and sports. Creative professions and various types of creative hobbies require a sedentary mode of activity. As a result, the muscles get tired of a static posture, the body refuses to create, as it feels the need to move. A morning jog, swimming pool or gym will tone your muscles and get your body in good physical shape. The main condition for this measure is systematicity. A one-time measure will not help overcome the unproductive period.

Sport

Temporary pause. If there is no inspiration, the work is not being done, then you need to take a break. If we are talking about a profession related to creativity, then there are quite flexible working conditions - you can agree with your boss about a few days of rest at your own expense or ask for permission to work remotely for a week on a flexible schedule.

If we talk about creativity as a hobby, then if there is no desire to do what you love, it is better to put it off. It’s worth thinking about what else you can do to fill your free time, besides this activity. A change in activity is useful - it creates conditions for the birth of new ideas and helps overcome the crisis.

Competition and the spirit of rivalry. Stagnation in creative search can be rationally used by spending time studying other masters of the pen who are on the wave of popularity. Analyzing the works of other authors allows you to see the strengths of your own works and determine areas for self-improvement. They say you need to know your enemy by sight. The saying is true not only regarding enemies, but also colleagues in creativity. Comparing your work with the work of your colleagues will allow a true professional to understand what needs to be done in order to beat the competition.
Education. Stagnation in creativity can be put to good use. For example, you can rationally spend your free time watching a training webinar or enrolling in advanced training or professional retraining courses. This path will allow you to get acquainted with technological innovations in the craft, which you will certainly want to try in practice - this already indicates a shift from a dead point. New activities, communication with new people, discovering new horizons in oneself - all these are effective measures to overcome stagnation, which return the desire to create and create.

Competition in creativity

Brainstorming method. In situations where a person is limited in time to solve a given production task, and the brain refuses to work in a given direction, the English method of brainstorming is effective. The method “works” due to the fact that several people are involved in solving one problem. They do not have to be colleagues and have the same educational profile. On the contrary, if people of different professions and different ages gather to participate in a brainstorming session, the solution to the problem will be original, and a minimum of time will be spent searching for it.

The essence of the method is that the participants are told a problem that needs to be solved. After that, they begin to offer various options for solving it, throwing out a variety of ideas. The statements and thoughts of the participants are recorded, no matter how meaningless they may seem at first glance. After all participants have spoken, all proposals have been written down, an analysis of options for solving the problem is carried out from the point of view of their acceptability, during which brilliant thoughts and ideas are born. Thus, the optimal solution for any problem is found.

Ask like-minded people for their opinions. If you can’t get out of a creative hole for a long time, you can resort to the help of like-minded people. There are various thematic forums, including for representatives of creative professions. Communication with people who have encountered similar situations instills in a person a feeling of unity, belonging to a certain social group; someone else’s experience of solving a problem can help to deal with one’s difficulties.

Like-minded people

A new look at old things. If the creator has a shortage of new ideas, you can help the muse wake up if you engage in the restoration and refinement of old creations, and not necessarily your own. It happens that a writer, reading a colleague’s work, realizes that some of the lines are rough. Wanting to correct them, a person brings something of his own to the whole work. The result is a new creation, the source of inspiration for which was the lines of a colleague. In this case, it will not be possible to be convicted of plagiarism, because the creation turned out to be completely new, there is not a single copied line in it.

Art has existed for many centuries, so it is now almost impossible to discover something fundamentally new in one of its directions. One way or another, the novelty will contain elements of what is already familiar and known to everyone.

What factors contribute to the onset of a creativity crisis?

One of the main causes of creative crisis is overwork. A person who is too carried away by the creative process forgets about rest, fearing that inspiration will leave him. However, the emotional uplift that accompanies the creative process is replaced by fatigue, apathy and depression. The body is tired and requires a break, because it has used up its energy reserves and needs time to replenish them.

People whose work involves creativity often lack sleep, which also contributes to overwork.

Another common cause of creative crisis is lack of harmony in personal life. A crisis in life entails a crisis in creativity. Creative people are usually deeply vulnerable, and it is not so difficult to upset their mental balance. Discord in the team, quarrels in the family, financial difficulties, illness of a loved one, etc. - such problems prevent them from concentrating and completely surrendering to the creative process.

A creative crisis also comes from the monotony and routine of everyday life, the lack of bright impressions and a source of inspiration.

Some creative people fall into a creative stupor even if they have too much work to do. At the initial stage of its implementation, they may have so many different ideas and plans that, due to the confusion in their thoughts, it can be difficult for them to systematize them and decide where to start. That is, their crisis comes not because they have nothing to say, but because they immediately want to express too much.

It also happens that a lack of access to the necessary information leads to a creative crisis.

Creative people - writers and poets, artists and musicians - are often too demanding of themselves, and if the completed work does not live up to their expectations, they can destroy it. At the same time, they often become depressed and give up creative work for a long time.