When I most need to rejuvenate with creativity, my brain likes to gatekeep and tell me that I’m being self-indulgent or silly by spending time doodling. At those times, I have to climb over the mental hedgerow that my brain has planted between my conscious self and creativity.
I have discovered three helpful lies I tell myself over and over again.
1. Assume inconsequence
Most artists have an important message or perspective to share with the world, and use their medium to connect and communicate in powerful ways. I, on the other hand, tend to stare blankly at the page and assume that I have nothing of interest to share.
The trick is to tell myself that I’ll never be sharing anything at all, and that whatever I draw couldn’t be of less consequence.
2. Digital only
What is more disposable than a few bytes stored on a handheld device? Who could argue that I’m wasting resources if there are no stacks of paper, paints, and failed sketches littering my floors?
Obviously, nobody (I would like) would argue this, but my own brain sometimes takes devil’s advocacy to the extreme. Easier to tell it that the only thing I am wasting is my own time—and in the last two years, spending my time being creative rather than eating or watching another Norwegian murder mystery has felt not only justifiable, but laudable.
Bonus for digital art: the brilliant “undo, undo, undo” option that makes it easier to experiment madly without hearing a little voice saying, “well, THAT isn’t going to work.”
(My brain doesn’t know in the moment that I might create a “real” art print. It thinks I’m just frivoling away.)
3. No big ideas
Most of my favorite drawings begin with a scribble. No idea, no message, no conscious intent: just a scribble.
Giving my brain the task of seeing something in that scribble is my happy place. Turning that idea into something others will recognize is a creative task that loosens up my brain, and lets it change gears from work- or home-related loops.
Only afterward (or if I’m lucky, mid-process) do I sometimes see a bigger message in the doodles.
These strategies are a workable secret sauce for staying one step ahead of my brain, that tricksy, troublesome partner of mine.