the “ritual response” to creative blocks
Creative blocks are a gateway to the creative life, a rite of passage in the realm of creativity. A creative block is something that makes it difficult to express creativity.
In a previous post, I discussed how the root of almost all creative blocks can be traced back to limiting beliefs we carry about ourselves and creativity. I shared a process I’ve developed called the Creative Compass to help you navigate these limiting beliefs. You can read more about it here.
What about afterwards? Just because we reframe the way we think, doesn’t necessarily mean creative blocks disappear entirely. We might still struggle with feeling stuck, unmotivated, or uninspired. We might feel stressed and burned out from our worldly responsibilities. While reframing limiting beliefs is a crucial step we must take in order to change our relationships with blocks, it’s certainly not the only step.
While some people turn to AI to create for them when feeling blocked, I strongly discourage doing so, as this doesn’t serve your creative process or help dissolve your blocks. You can read more about this here.
I’m going to share with you my favorite approach to dissolving creative blocks. It’s what I call the “Ritual Response.”
But first, let’s talk about the power of rituals.
Rituals have existed for as long as human beings have been on earth. They have existed in all societies, cultures, and religions. A ritual is a physical or symbolic act that is designed to facilitate meaning, connection, and transformation in the relationship to oneself, other people, the outer world, and to the Divine.
Rituals help us to:
Connect with our innermost selves
Connect with another person or community
Connect with nature
Create meaning
Cultivate spiritual awareness
Facilitate an intimate connection with the Divine
Create a bridge between the conscious and unconscious mind, the worldly and spiritual realms
Let go and release something or someone we might be holding on to
Embark on a pathway to personal transformation
Integrate the psyche
For a more in-depth dive on using the power of ritual to revive the Three Pillars of Vitality, make sure to download my free e-guide, Rituals to Enhance Your Creative Life. I also talk about the Three Pillars of Vitality in this blog post here.
Sadly, in our modern Western age, we’ve lost touch with the power of ritual. The closest connection many of us have to ritual is routine. While routine is certainly important and helpful in keeping us anchored as we attend to our endless worldly responsibilities, it is generally more practical, mundane, and often engaged with passively. Routine is more about habit and efficiency rather than the process, meaning, and experience that comes with ritual.
If we wish to reclaim the power of ritual, we must learn to respect this powerful tool and recognize what it offers. We might turn to rituals that already exist in our society, culture, and religious/spiritual lives, redefining them, and reintegrating them into our lives with intention. We might create our own rituals, similarly infusing them with intention and meaning to help deepen the relationship to ourselves and the Divine, as well as to our creative life.
This is where the “Ritual Response” comes in.
Our modern world has a “doing” problem. We’re obsessed with productivity, results, and living in a mode of “go, go, go.” As a consequence, we’ve lost touch with the art of “being.” “Being” mindful and present. Reflecting, relaxing, letting ourselves simply be. This has created an imbalance, and it shows up in our creative lives.
With our creative work, we can’t always be in a mode of creation. It’s impossible, and an unfair expectation to set on ourselves. Sometimes, our creative blocks arise to help us re-establish a balance between “doing” and “being.” If you’re blocked, don’t force yourself to stay in “doing” mode. Try transitioning into “being” mode instead, a mindful and present state where you give your mind and body intentional rest.
“Being” is an invitation to respond to your blocks by engaging in rituals, which can lead to insight, inspiration, connection, and transformation. This is revolutionary for your creative life.
The most powerful rituals are often small, but meaningful. They don’t have to be grand.
Some examples of rituals include:
Reading (for a list of my favorite books, be sure to download my free Fiction Book Guide and my free Nonfiction Book Guide)
Walking
Spending time in nature
Drinking tea
Chanting or prayer
Symbolic acts, such as lighting a candle, diffusing essential oils, or shredding a letter
Taking a hot bath
Exploring a park or museum
Appreciating art
Listening to music
Dancing
Meditating
Journaling
What distinguishes these acts as rituals as opposed to mere isolated activities is that the act is conscious, intentional, and holds symbolic meaning for one’s inner world.
As a writer, I’ve learned to recognize when I feel blocked. More often than not, it looks like struggling to know what comes next in my story, or struggling to find the right words (or any word, really).
I used to respond to these blocks with anger. I would tell myself, “You can never find the right words. Your vocabulary sucks and is limited. You write like a preschooler. You never have energy when it comes to writing.” Of course, this is not true. But it felt true. This only served to deepen my anger, and I would avoid writing for some time.
Now, my response has completely shifted. First, I used the Creative Compass to reframe my thoughts and beliefs, which changed my self-dialogue.
“You’re tired, and your mind and body need to rest. The story writes itself. Right now, you need to step away and let it simmer for a while. Let’s do something to relax and feel inspired.” Or my personal favorite, “Let’s go eat carbs.”
This is where I began to create rituals in response to my blocks, several of which I will share with you now.
One of my favorite things to do when I have writer’s block involves a combination of music, movement, and fantasy.
I’ve created soundtracks for all of my stories. I love listening to these soundtracks and immersing myself in the worlds I’ve created and in the lives of my characters. I might even imagine I’m one of my characters, and try to experience the world through their senses.
Sometimes, I’ll go on a long walk, listen to the soundtrack, and fantasize all sorts of scenarios, conversations, and outcomes for my story. Other times, I’ll replace walking with a dancing element, where I express a scene or character through dance. If my body doesn’t feel like walking or dancing, I’ll sit or lie down, listen to the soundtrack, close my eyes, and simply fantasize about my story. Embodying my story through some kind of sensory experience helps me move from blocked to inspired by giving my brain and body what they need. Then there are days where “being” in a state of writer’s block looks like lying in the sun or reading a book, or both. Occasionally, I’ll binge on Dubai chocolate to cope.
Prayer is one of the most powerful rituals. Remember that the Ultimate Creator is the one who made you a creator. The source of your creative life is from the Ultimate Source. God is the one who has granted you your creative gifts. You are the vessel carrying the life force of creativity. It has its own mind. It uses you to deliver its message. The story writes itself, I always say. This is why creativity is one of the highest forms of worship, because you are honoring the gifts God has given you.
If you’re in the process of exploring these creative gifts, you can take my free Connect With Your Inner Creator Quiz to find out what creator type you are.
When I’m feeling blocked, I’ll often pray and speak with God to show me what it is I’m seeking in my creative pursuits. With my stories, I ask God to inspire me and show me what comes next. Sometimes, what comes next is not what I had expected at all, but as I said, the story writes itself. This ritual of prayer, alongside my other rituals, have helped strengthen my trust and faith that the inspiration and revelations will always arrive exactly when they’re meant to.
I continue to explore and expand my rituals when feeling blocked, and I encourage you to create rituals of your own as well.
I believe it’s important to mention that creativity isn’t like a 9-5 job, nor does it follow the rules of a 9-5. We don’t get to clock in and clock out. We live in a society that exploits anything and everything it can for profit, but our creative life does not fit into that system. We need to treat our creative life force with respect, as its own living and breathing entity.
We feed it, nurture it, cultivate it, let it rest, talk to it, let it play. Playfulness is vital to creativity. Creativity is not our employee, and we are not its manager. It is a partnership where we listen, understand, and empathize with this part of us, as if it’s its own person.
Our creative force may need to feel safe to reveal itself, or may want to rest for days at a time. Unlike men, whose bodies function on a 24-hour circadian cycle, women’s bodies function on a 28 day infradian cycle. This means our energy, mood, cognition, and physical performance fluctuates over the course of a month as a result of shifting hormones across the menstrual cycle, so it’s unfair to expect ourselves to show up with the same level of energy, focus, and output every single day. This is why I practice cycle-conscious creativity, which you can read more about here.
Take the time to learn the language of your creative life force, reclaim your relationship with ritual, and ensure that your expectations of your creative life are realistic, respectful, and fair. Then sit back and prepare to feel inspired.
