“If you've lost focus, just sit down and be still. Take the idea and rock it to and fro. Keep some of it and throw some away, and it will renew itself. You need do no more.”
-Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Energy can feel nebulous even during the best of times. Are you finding yourself in a significant adjustment period? You’re learning to cope with managing unexpected transitions right now. It’s normal to need to recalibrate. Likewise, it can feel exhausting when so many changes are happening at once.
Your creative practice can be a beautiful refuge from the chaos, but if you just can’t find the energy to start or continue your creative practice, then this post is for you.
Your energy tool-kit
I use every single tool I’m sharing with you to rebuild momentum with my creative expression habit. I’ve collected these tips from teachers, mentors, and peers over the years. And I have so many more to learn (if you have any that have worked for you, please let me know)!
A word on mindset
Mindset is the framework you mentally build for your practice. Remember:
You are safe. Know that you are safe at this moment. Use your creative expression practice to show your anxious mind that you are out of harm's way. This reinforcing technique calms down the fight, flight, or freeze reactions in your body.
Don’t judge yourself while you’re making something. Don’t throw anything away yet! If you get stuck, move to the next thing—forget quality, seek growth.
Stay flexible and curious. The world around you will always be changing, how interesting is that?
Okay, now that we’ve established your foundation, let’s move on to pumping up your energy!
Energetic housekeeping
I’m sure there are many ideas on this list that will sound familiar. It can help to try reading each suggestion with fresh eyes and an open mind. Even if something didn’t work for you before, it just may today.
Keep it simple and easy
Overwhelm can turn off your creative drive in a second.
Practice your creative habit for 15 minutes once a day to start; that’s it.
Exhausted? Do it tired for one moment; this may be the boost you need and will lead you into continuing. Focus on moving your practice forward at your own pace. Give yourself the grace of even one moment—touch the paintbrush, put it in paint, touch the paper, and you’ve met your quota, everything else is extra.
Micro-steps. Think of the next smallest step you can take to move forward. And then break it down even further (it can help to write this down).
Work smaller, literally. If you usually work 32x32,” work 12x12” instead. Are you aspiring to write a novel? Try short-stories first. Or flash fiction.
Body awareness. Get things flowing: shake your arms and legs, dance, move around, breathe. Get your energy moving.
Try it lying down. Sometimes you just want to lie down and chill on the sofa. Set up a little creativity kit by the couch, so there’s a queue to turn off the TV and crack open your project. A kit is also helpful to have ready during times of recovery.
Express yourself! Reframe your practice as a sacred time to express your feelings at the moment. That’s all it needs to be. Invite your heart into your practice. PLAY!
Imagine. Think of an animal that best expresses how you’re feeling right now. Do a doodle of what you’d otherwise be writing. Put yourself in the shoes of your future self, and listen to what they would recommend for your life at this moment. Visualization is powerful.
Use prompts. If you’re feeling brain dead, get a little help from prompts to help get your juices flowing again.
Break up with perfection
Perfectionism is a huge energy zapper. Sometimes you just feel like everything you make sucks, and you’ve lost your creative mojo. All you want is to get back to doing good work!
These thoughts are perfectionism. It’s a sneaky bastard. Here are some tools that can help you notice when you’re in perfectionist mode. Just remember the real antidote to perfectionism: Compassion.
Make ugly things. You don’t need to like the result for it to have value. Trust me, I spent a year painting over my paintings in an attempt to master a new medium, and have very little process work to show for it—a considerable loss for documenting my journey and learning from my mistakes.
Try something new. Getting out of your comfort zone is a crucial offering of your creative practice, and you can do it from the safety of your own home. It can be as simple as adding a new paint color to your palette or committing to a different creative activity, like moving from painting to improv.
Make your practice a safe space. Explore ideas, emotions, and questions without shame.
Find a good therapist or counselor. Perfectionism wears many masks and can be hard to recognize as it’s happening. A good therapist can call you out on your self-sabotaging tendencies.
Identify energy drains
It can feel like a bummer at first, but sometimes we need to cut things out to make room for what matters. You may be shocked by how much energy you were putting into stuff that doesn’t align with your values.
Root out decision fatigue and simplify your routines, within reason (otherwise this can quickly become an energy waster too, trust me).
Strengthen your intuition. Create a quiet time to listen and learn from your body in the present.
Recalibrate. Have you been giving away your energy by seeking outside approval? Extricate yourself from typical energy sucks like dieting, materialism, toxic relationships, linear thinking, pushing yourself, rumination, industrialization, and the patriarchy. Turn to more balanced systems. If you have the bandwidth, do an energy audit and cut what is no longer serving you.
Pause your shows and YouTube subscriptions. They’ll be waiting for you when you come back. If you need your fix, use it for parenting yourself: treat yourself to your favorite show after 15 minutes of your practice.
Focus on one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is another sneaky bastard and cherished in our culture. Try making your practice a sacred space where you do only one thing at a time.
Nourish your soul and fill up your well
When your sense of fulfillment is waning, or you’re burnt out, it’s easy to convince yourself to wait until inspiration strikes. Don’t listen to that thought; it’s a lie.
Tap into the spiritual. Explore mindfulness, Reiki, tarot, meditation, self-inquiry, prayer, journaling, or any other manner of ways to connect to your true nature.
Seek beauty and love. Train yourself to find the beauty in this world. Go outside. Fill yourself to the brim with love exchanges in your relationships.
Reflect on what’s working. Before bed, consider 1-3 things that helped you feel more present today.
Be a treasure hunter. Snap a mental picture of a treasured moment then use it in your practice. Daydreams can be excellent sources of inspiration.
Formulate a nourishing space to create. Have things ready to go (basket/desk/closet/room) uninterrupted. Even digitally, for example, if you’re a writer, have the Freedom app running, and docs on your desktop ready to be cracked open at a moment’s notice. Find a place that works where you can have a pretty good environment to create (read: NOT PERFECT).
Bonus tip: Having things ready means less energy used to start-up.
Create an inspirational home environment. Bring beauty inside with flowers, paintings, and things that get your wheels turning. You’ll fill up your tank subconsciously while eating your breakfast and staring at seasonal blooms.
Rest. Unfortunately, it needs to be said; you can’t have enough energy if you aren’t getting enough sleep, period. Remember to say goodnight to your screens hours before you tuck yourself into bed. Find places to sneak rest into your day, nap in the afternoon. Take regular breaks. Side bonus: Your life will slow down and feel more spacious too!
Change your outside to influence your inside. Create a ritual where you change out of work clothes into comfortable clothes, or simply put on an apron to signal to your body that you’re ready to be in creative mode.
Take a vacation at home. Sometimes you need to shake up your routine. And while we can’t travel right now, we can set up parameters for a holiday at home: order take-out, try a new cookbook, sip a smoothie, have a picnic, and nap under the sun.
Be true to yourself
A creative practice is personal with public results. Sometimes that can get messy; remember always to go back to your center—you.
Tune in to your values. Download my “Values in 15 minutes” guide and use your values as an energy compass. Values help ground you and give meaning to your habit.
Create for yourself. Have you been creating for others and now feel burnt out? Go back to a core practice and create for yourself.
Work on your boundaries. It’s common for the opinions of others to become internalized critics. The primary way to prevent critic creep is to set up clear boundaries. Again, a therapist can be invaluable in setting up bouncy boundaries.
Bonus tip: We live in a world that glamorizes sharing, but you aren’t obligated to talk about your work if you don’t want to. You don’t owe anyone an explanation.
In short, DO YOU.
Get help when you need it
Creative practices can often be solitary and don’t have a central support system. You will need to advocate for yourself, sometimes even to yourself. Gather up the courage to ask for help. I’m still learning this one and struggle between the point of needing help and asking for it.
Listen to your body and check on your health. If your lack of energy is hard to shake, talk to your health care provider as it can be a symptom of any number of health conditions.
Join a community. Become part of something that keeps you accountable. It’s one way to create the structure for your habit while also inspiring and being inspired by each other’s dedication.
Get accountable. Due dates! They’ve saved my creative ass on more than one occasion. But sometimes you need more oomph.
I’ve noticed that professionals (teachers, coaches, therapists) are great for holding me accountable, and sometimes my good ol’ Google calendar does the trick.
For you, it may be a new acquaintance, a friend of a friend, or even your partner. It depends and can take a few rounds of trial and error before you recognize who or what will work best for you.
And don’t discount the strength of accountability to a stranger.
Remember this
I’ve included more tips here than you will need to recharge your creative battery today. Creative expression is a non-linear process, so if anything screamed out at you, do that! Try something else on another day. Trust your intuition to lead you. It’s all just play after all.
The key takeaway here is that you can find the energy to make headway on your creative journey here and now. Each action counts as a step in your journey, no matter how small. If your thoughts are telling you otherwise, recognize it’s perfectionism in disguise.
If feelings of overwhelm are getting in the way, know that you don’t need to do this alone, ask for help when you need a boost. It’s not about competition; it’s not about productivity; it’s just about you finding your way back to your true self and uncovering your sources of energy.
Forget quality, seek growth.
If you have any favorite tips or stories of how your creative practice sustains you or you’d like to share about finding the energy to create, I’d love to hear from you.
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