How To Believe in the Amazing Creative Writer Within You

We are all more creative than we think we are, and the biggest single reason why we don’t write as freely, as fully, or as fearlessly as we could is because of the negative and limiting beliefs we hold in our minds.

For you to start to be able to release that wonderful writer inside of you, first you have to believe that he or she is there. If your mind is full of thoughts like “I’ll never be creative” and “I have no writing talent,” then obviously this will severely limit how creative you can become.

It’s like a pole vaulter going to the Olympics with hopes of getting a medal, then trying to jump 6 metres with his shoelaces tied together and a blindfold on. However hard he tries, he’s going to end up face down in the dirt! Our pole-vaulting pal will be lucky to clear 6 CENTIMETRES with such limitations.

So here are 3 steps you can take to believing in and releasing that writing talent within you:

1. Give yourself a Doubt Detox. Identify all those limiting thoughts you have and write them down. Any thought that doesn’t help you hinders you. So you might have some apparently innocuous beliefs such as, “I can only write a few hundred words in any one sitting.”  This won’t necessarily stop you writing a few hundred words. But what if instead you believed “I can sit and write 10,000 words without stopping?”  What difference would that make to your creativity?

   You’ve got to become a highly trained doubt detective with this and be vigilant in spotting any thought or belief that doesn’t enhance your ability to create. Identify these negative culprits and write them all down on a single sheet of paper. Just having them out in the open will immediately reduce their damaging impact.

2. Adopt a Positive Perspective. For each of those limiting beliefs you’ve identified, it’s now time to turn them around into positive equivalents. For example, “I have no writing talent” might become “I have an abundance of writing talent” or it could become “I have all the writing talent I’ll ever need.”

   Once you do this for a few, you’ll start to get creative (oh yes!) and come up with a number of positive versions for each negative. Write them all down. Just the act of writing each statement out in the present tense as if it were true makes it more real in your mind and begins to replace the influence of negative thinking.
3. Repeat and Reinforce. Because you’re a very creative person, you can also put this creativity to powerful effect in how you come up with new negative thinking that will sabotage your creativity. Holding negative thoughts in your mind has become such a habit over the years that it will feel a little different without them. A bit like if you’ve worn tight clothing or very supportive underwear. When you take it off, it feels liberating but slightly different to what you’ve been used to.

   So be vigilant and don’t slip into old thought patterns. Notice when you start thinking something that is not supportive of your creativity. Remember you’ve become a doubt detective, and your budding Sherlock needs to be constantly aware of any suspicious thought activity that could scupper your creative writing efforts. What can you do when negative thinking does creep in? Write down the thought, then turn it around by adopting that positive perspective.

So there are the 3 steps – Doubt Detox, Positive Perspective, Repeat and Reinforce.

Follow these and you'll start to believe in the real and amazing writing talent within you just waiting to be explored...