How to Stop Creative Sabotage and Achieve Artistic Success
There have been various times in my life when I sabotaged my best creative intentions.
I procrastinated and failed to complete creative projects. I missed important deadlines. I focused on negative experiences rather than on positive ones. And I generally failed to do what I desired to do in order to gain the rewards of my efforts.
If this sounds like you, then you’re probably sabotaging your creativity and your creative pursuits.
And if so, then you’re also probably frustrated and dissatisfied with your creative work and with yourself as an artist. More significantly, you may be deeply unhappy and even believe that you’re incapable of being creative in effective and skilled ways.
So, how do you stop being a saboteur of your creative work, start succeeding in your artistic pursuits, and find the happiness and satisfaction inherent to creativity?
What is Creative Sabotage?
Creative self-sabotage is not the result of a lack of skills, knowledge, desire or even effort.
Rather, it’s the result of how we think about ourselves as artists and how we view our creativity and our creative work.
Self-sabotage feeds off of bad creative habits, such as perfectionism, a reluctance to take risks, negative thinking, and self-deprecation. Also, it stems from a range of uncomfortable feelings such as fear, sadness, and anger. And it tends to highlight low self-esteem and our insecurities as artists.
Despite the tenacity of these problems, I’ve found that there are ways to shift sabotage to success, and it’s a lot easier than you might think.
How to Stop Sabotage
Here are some ways I shifted my thinking and habits in order to stop sabotaging my efforts and to succeed creatively:
Claim your creativity
Not claiming your creativity and your identity as a creative person is one way you sabotage your efforts as it’s difficult to take yourself seriously enough to place the time and energy into creative success. If you create art and love doing it, then taking up the mantle of “artist” is as simple as saying: “I’m an artist.” And you can further internalize this identity by telling those closest to you. By sharing our creative identities with others, then we empower ourselves to claim our creativity and do what we need to do in order to succeed.
Let your core desires guide you
Focusing on what we feel we “should” do, rather than on what we love creatively and what we feel passionately about is another way we sabotage our creative pursuits. Try not to focus on what you believe will sell or be well-received. Avoid what you think is the “hot” trend or what publishers or editors want. Focus on your own creative desires and let those guide you towards creative success.
Create realistic expectations
While setting goals can be helpful, striving towards unrealistic ones is a sure way to sabotage your creative efforts. Instead of goal-setting, try focusing on creative intentions. Set an intention and work diligently towards it. If you work better with goals, make them SMART and doable and work towards achieving them incrementally. By taking small, realistic steps, then you’re more likely to get things done and succeed creatively.
Develop your inner coach
Every artist possesses an inner critical voice, which drives us and give us direction and guidance. However, when that voice is negative and even downright mean, then we’re unlikely to feel motivated. Listening to this voice of the inner critic is another way we sabotage our creative efforts. But by developing a positive, nurturing inner voice, what some call an “inner coach,” you’re more likely to feel motivated and much more likely seek creative success.
Focus on past and current success
Worrying about future success or past failures, rather than focusing on our success is another way we sabotage our creative efforts. How have you succeeded in the past? What successes have you enjoyed? What are you doing now that works? By focusing on our successes rather than our failures or our worries about future failure, then we’re much more likely to get things done and to feel successful when we do so.
Seek support
Finally, creating art can be a very lonely experience. Staying isolated in our craft is a sure way to become mired in our problems and worries. Rather than isolate, try to reach out to others who may be able to offer support. In some cases, this may be as simple as sharing your work with your friends and family. Or you may want to seek out an artistic community either online or offline which nurtures you and your art. There are so many different ways to share your work and to reach out to others for the support that you seek. By doing so, you create a context in which you can feel supported, understood, and not so alone, which translates into creative success.
There’s No “Correct” Way to Succeed
Creative success comes to us in many different forms. Also, there’s no “correct” way to succeed creatively. So try not to worry about doing things the “right” way and trust your own artistic impulses and intuition.
If you’re sabotaging yourself, you’re not lazy or incapable.
Rather, more likely, you’re actually hard-working and highly capable. However, artists with this temperament tend to be really hard on themselves.
So, try easing up some and see if you start succeeding artistically rather than sabotaging your best creative efforts.
Do you sabotage yourself? What methods do you use for creative success?
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Flickr photo by lanuiop
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