Creative Process: Five Inspired Quotes to Quell Your Creative Struggle
Feb 06, 2018
Let your phone play dress up with these free downloadable wallpapers full of inspired quotes. Every time you pick up your phone, you’ll get a little nudge towards living your best creative life. Read the blurbs below and decide which creative struggle speaks to your process right now. Click the button to immediately download your quote and set as your phone’s wallpaper.
Do you keep putting it off?
Apparently, 20 percent of adults are chronic procrastinators. Have you ever left a well-intended project untouched for longer than you’d like to admit (remember that untouched crochet kit sitting in the closet)? Or do you put deadlines off until the last minute? Sometimes leaving something to the last minute can create pressure, and hey, pressure can create diamonds. But more often than not, procrastination is a habit that can cause a negative self-image or lead to never starting that project, picking up that new hobby, or taking the first step towards your creative pursuits at all.
If you never try, you’ll never know!
As the wise J.M. Barrie once said: “We are all failures – at least the best of us are.” The most successful people are successful as a direct result of their failures. The more we fail, the more we learn! Failing and making mistakes in our work is a natural part of the creative process, and serves to guide us toward a more effective future outcome. It’s like an elimination process; as we gradually eliminate the elements in our practice that aren’t working, we improve our chances of finding those that will. And hey, you never know; you may just tap into your creative goldmine first time! But if you do fail, dust yourself off and try again. And again, and again after that. With every failure, you’re one step closer to achieving your goals.
Forget perfect; it won’t be anything at all if you never start in the first place.
Imagine a set of scales, with Perfection on one side and Progress on the other. When you raise Perfection too high, refusing to move on with your work until every detail is flawless, Progress gets weighed down and suffers as a result. On the other hand, if you focus entirely on Progress, racing through your projects with little consideration of the end result, Perfection suffers. So how do we find that sweet spot between the two extremes? While perfectionism has its perks, it can immobilise us in our creative process. It’s important to recognise that our art is never perfect (what is perfect, anyway?), it is just that: art. If we are constantly doubting ourselves and crippling our creative process with our desire to be perfect, we won’t be able to progress toward our goals.
Time flies, especially when you’re caught up being busy.
Ah, the old “I’ll do it tomorrow” trick. Why do we keep falling for this one? We all know what happens when tomorrow rolls around, and the tomorrow after that… and so it goes. No matter how good our intentions are, if you want to see your creative goals reach fruition you need to action them today. One way to do this is to make S.M.A.R.T goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound). Instead of telling yourself you’ll do it tomorrow, tell yourself that today, you will practice sketching fiddle-leaf figs in your visual diary for fifteen minutes. Clear, concrete goals help us cement (pun intended) better habits. Leave tomorrow for tomorrow, and get on with your goals today.
Inspiration is around every corner: keep your eyes open.
Want to be creative, but feel as if you have no inspiration or ideas? Before you go booking that deluxe mountain retreat, take a closer look around you at the everyday, seemingly mundane things surrounding your life. What about that spiderweb on your corner, the book you’re reading, or the way the light filters through your kitchen window? Remember, all ideas are valid! Keep a visual diary or notebook and pen with you while you’re out and about, and write down or sketch the things you see. What made you notice them? How do they make you feel? Hold on to all these little details, you never know when they may come in handy!
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