"When you really intend to do something, and commit yourself to doing it and if you have integrity about it, you are forced to consider your motives and desires." —Peter Ciccariello

If you're stuck, blocked, or spinning your wheels creatively, chances are it's not just a lack of inspiration — it's a pattern.

We all fall into familiar loops of thinking and behavior, especially around our creative process. Some of those loops are helpful. Others are traps. The trick is learning to spot them — then deciding which ones need breaking.

One of the most underrated tools for doing this is simple but powerful: intent. When we clearly focus our intention — to change, to create, to move forward — it becomes a force. But intent isn't magic. You have to choose to act on it. You have to want the discomfort of growth more than the comfort of old habits.

Creative blocks aren't mysterious. They're often just distractions in disguise. Maybe it's endless chores. Maybe it's YouTube. Maybe it's doom-scrolling, snacks, or rearranging your spice rack. The form doesn't matter. What matters is the function.

That's why the most useful question you can ask yourself is: "What is it for?"

Not in some cosmic sense. Just ask it — honestly — about your actions, thoughts, and impulses in the moment. What is this for? Is it helping me make something — or helping me avoid it?

Want to take that even further? Grab a stack of sticky notes. Write "What is it for?" on a couple of them. Stick them in places you walk by every day — by your desk, on the TV, near the fridge. They'll work like tiny grenades, cracking open automatic habits and reminding you to check in with yourself.

Dealing with negative self-talk? You know your usual greatest hits — "I'm not good enough," "I'm not like [insert name]," etc. You also know exactly what the antidote is. Write it down. Find an artist's quote that lifts you. Post it in your creative space like a talisman.

Thought habits are still habits — and habits can be broken. That means your mind, the same one that throws obstacles in your path, can also design clever ways around them.

Here's another trick: prep in advance.

If you're a musician, set up your gear, tune your instruments, prep your tracks. If you're a painter, stretch your canvas, find your brushes, get your space ready. Don't give your brain the chance to stall you with "I'm not ready." Make starting easy. Remove friction. Get to the part where you play.

Most importantly, remember: these blocks didn't show up overnight. Some of them have roots in childhood. Others are decades deep. It's okay if they take time to unwind. The key is to keep showing up — not perfectly, but persistently.

Be gentle. Be honest. And most of all, do the work.

You know how. Trust that. •

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Next: DeMYTHstifying creative blocks

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Original post:

An important aspect of developing the energy required to break through creative blocks is learning to recognize the patterns of behavior and thinking, particularly those surrounding our process, which we tend to fall into, and further recognizing which of those patterns are helpful, and which are harmful to the activity of getting on with the work.

One of the most surprisingly vital, but often little appreciated, tools in this area is simply intent. Brought properly into focus, the power of our desire to make changes in our psychological environment happen is formidable. There are tricks, large and small, which one can deploy in order to keep this intent in the foreground. But the decision to address harmful patterns will have consequences only if you actively decide you are willing to make changes.

The blocks we throw up for ourselves, the particular devices we use to distract ourselves from doing the work, are essentially the same, but vary widely in form. Some might use television, some sex, some might attend to mundane tasks about the home. As always, it's not the form that's important, it's the purpose. It's the content.

Thus, the first and possibly most important tool to keep in mind (or, more realistically, bring to mind periodically) is the simple question — What is it for? The question has universal application, but is useful here as applied only to our own words, thoughts, and actions, not those of others. If you can ask this of yourself as you go about your day — and stay honest with yourself about your answers — the veil will begin to lift.

Get a stack of stickies. Write "What is it for?" on one or two of them and place them in areas you occasionally pass by throughout your day. As we go about your day, our week, it can sometimes be surprising to be reminded of our real motivations under ordinary activities. Little notes to ourselves can be like little firecrackers that shatter the facades of our usual modes of thinking.

Is TV a problem? Consider limiting your time spent — you can remind yourself with a note on a sticky somewhere on the TV. What about blocks you throw up as you're trying to do the work? Very often, we know just the kind of thoughts we use to sabotage ourselves ("I'm not talented enough," "I'm not as good as so-and-so," etc., etc. ad infinitum), thus we, better than anyone, know exactly how to write a note to ourselves that expresses the precise opposite of those thoughts, those little poison darts we throw at ourselves. Find a quote from an artist which reinforces this idea if you can, and include it. Place it in your work area.

Habits can be broken, and this includes habits of thought.

Use the talents and motivation of your mind in this problem-solving mode to create tools for yourself that address the unhelpful thoughts your mind can generate in those problem-creating modes.

Another important thing — Prepare your work materials in advance. If you are a musician, songs might need to be brought into usable keys, instruments tuned, equipment hooked up, etc. If you are a visual artist, canvases might need to be stretched, or those brushes gotten down from the garage shelf. Etc., etc. The idea here is simply not to let the actions of preparation to create provide enough time for old patterns to reassert themselves, for doubts to form, for excuses to rise up — we want to be able to begin the simple act of making quickly, before any of the thinking about creating can take hold. Make it easy to get started. Make it easy to play.

Lastly, it's important for the blocked artist to remember that, very often, we didn't get this way overnight. Negative behaviors and negative patterns of thought develop over time, sometimes starting as far back as childhood, and can even become encrusted in a way, and sometimes — not always — it's just going to take time to reawaken the part of us that can throw ourselves into the work and create without inhibition.

So be gentle with yourself…as you do the work. •

©2009 by An Artist in Brooklyn All rights reserved.

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