The I Don't Feel Creative Today Funk

Nothing can get a creative person in a funk faster than waking up without inspiration. So you putter around, waiting for some flash of creative motivation to strike. If you're lucky, you see, read, or hear something that captures interest and away you go.

But more often than not, you're just stuck. Nothing provides that spark. No juices are flowing. Nothing gets done.

And that's when the self criticism and judgment take over.  I've been there, and I bet you have too -- that beatin' up on yourself mood funk can be so self sabotaging.

Getting out of the funk takes

• a shift in perspective 
• a change in energy
• reviewing what you've already done or left undone

Changing perspective works because you see things in a different way. I know people who literally will stand on their head, or lie down on their side to see something from a different angle.    Other ways to change perspective can include asking friends for their opinions, or seeing how a topic or event is being covered in the media or on Facebook. Or try journaling, and ask yourself, how can I see this differently.


Changing energy works because it opens you to engaging differently with your in-the-moment experience. Exercising is a common way to change energy, but a 10 minute walk or even a shower can open the energetic pathways for new ideas, motivation and inspiration to come to you.

Reviewing old projects works because you'll see things that you'd do differently now, or that need freshening up.  You might even find things you left undone and forgot about.  And in plunging in to update or fix or finish, your creative mind will start feeling empowered and renewed, too.  You'll be moving forward out of that mental rut in no time.

Any of these approaches to getting out of the I don't feel creative today funk can serve to lift your mood and give you a new attitude about your creative abilities.

And once that happens, you'll be back on track.

Creativity Everywhere?

Ask 100 people to tell you what they think of when you say the words creative or creativity, and more than 80% will likely say  it has to do with painting, singing, writing, sculpting or something else related to the end products of the arts.

The first impulse -- the conditioned response -- associated with creativity is that it is something apart from "serious" work or learning. But creativity is a process, a way of seeing, a way of engaging the world with out-of-the-box-ness.

Famed psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi researched creativity and defined one of its central components as the flow state.  This is a state of being completely absorbed in what you are doing.  It is a state that any creative person shares with all creative people, regardless of degree or type of talent, or medium with which one is working.

Again, creativity comes down to a way of being.  In this case, it's almost a kind of trance or altered state of consciousness.

Contrary to the idea that going with the flow is a lazy ride wherever circumstances take you, Csikszentmihalyi's flow is a focused attention that drives you to keep going no matter how many obstacles are put in your way, no matter what the momentary challenges may be.

We all have the capacity to go with the creative flow.  What will you focus your flow state on today?