Smash Your Creative Blocks:
Cross-Train Your Creativity
I’ve written about cross-pollination before.
Athletes have known this for decades: you don’t just train the specific skill. You cross-train.
Swimmers lift weights.
Runners do yoga.
Fighters study dance.
But somehow we’ve been programmed to think creativity works in isolation.
In the same way that we individualize our life into compartments or blocks.
But this doesn’t, because we’re holistic beings.
A decision made in one part of our lives affects the others.
Whether we know this or not.
Whether we agree with this or not.
That’s just how it is.
So if you’re stuck on a creative project—writing a novel, starting an online business, improving your finances—trying harder may be counterproductive.
Very likely, your subconscious mind is already working on a solution for your immediate problem.
As soon as you state a problem to yourself, you’re giving a command to your subconscious mind to find a solution.
Once you’ve stated your problem, you need to get out of your own way and let your subconscious go to work.
Neville Goddard says send your wish to your higher mind and let go.
So the breakthrough in your creative project might come from:
A physical workout that clears mental fog
A financial problem that teaches you about constraints
A relationship conflict that reveals human motivation
Cleaning and straightening your home so your subconscious works
But you see the relationship mind and body:
When you’re stuck creatively, don’t stay in the creative zone.
That plot problem you’ve wrestled with for days?
Sometimes it solves itself during a walk.
Engage a different part of your brain after you’ve tried using it on a specific problem and have come up against a stone wall.
Balance your budget
Fix a device that is sitting in your clutter drawer
Organize a messy space in your home you’ve been ignoring for weeks
Logic problems can reset creative ones.
Connect with someone. Real conversation generates ideas that solitary brainstorming never will. Listen to how people actually talk, think, contradict themselves.
Do something with your hands. Cook. Build. Garden. The mind works differently when the hands are busy.
Stop treating your creative work like it exists in a vacuum.
Your creativity feeds on everything else. And everything else feeds on your creativity.
The programmer who never leaves their desk writes sterile code.
The one who hikes, cooks, argues, laughs, and lives?
They build something human.
Same goes for you.
Your creative practice isn’t separate from your life.
It’s woven through all of it.
Feed one part, and you feed them all.
Starve one, and you’ll feel it everywhere.
It’s funny how often the conventional advice for creative blocks is always "try harder,” when the real solution is often the opposite. Step away and change the channel for a while.