How To Kill Your Creativity

How creative are you right now in your life? How much would you love to increase your creativity? There are many ways we can be more creative. Just as crucially, there are a whole host of ways we can kill our creativity before it has a chance to truly develop.

How many of the following 7 steps are you taking to kill your creativity, maybe without even realizing?

1. Don’t create regularly, don’t develop creative habits. Create only when you feel the conditions are exactly right, you have lots of free time, you have no other commitments and the planets are perfectly aligned. Don’t bother committing to create for a minimum period of time each and every day.
2. Don’t capture any ideas. When you have a great idea, trust that you will remember it in fine detail. Don’t ever write your ideas down in a creative journal so you can use them at a later date. Don’t collect your ideas and realize the simple truth that the more ideas you have, the more ideas you have.
3. Don’t ever go to new places to be inspired. Expect to be excited and rejuvenated by staying in the same places and never going anywhere new. Avoid any place that may give you creative energy and motivation like galleries, exhibitions, art supply stores and craft markets.
4. Don’t be a part of any supportive creative group or community. Don’t even give yourself the chance to realize how encouraging other creative people around you can be. Don’t experience the work of others and share the struggles and triumphs of a creative life. Stay totally isolated and alone.
5. Don’t have a workspace set up to create. Expect to be able to create amidst piles of clutter that drain your creative energy. Don’t define for yourself a specific room or part of a room just for you, so you can create as freely and easily as possible. Don’t have your creative tools and equipment set up and ready, make it as difficult to find and use them as possible.
6. Don’t do anything that might build your confidence. Don’t begin with small manageable creative projects, then work up to larger more complex projects. Create nothing for months, then expect to be able to create the most adventurous and vast project you’ve ever begun.
7. Don’t create anything that isn’t utterly perfect in every possibly way. Don’t allow yourself to make any mistakes. Make sure everything you create is perfect at every stage. If it isn’t, discard it as useless and start something new. Dismiss any works in progress as complete failures because they didn’t become masterpieces in a very short space of time.

Which of these 7 ways to kill your creativity resonate most with you? What first steps can you take today to stop this self-sabotage and actually give your creativity the chance to shine that it truly deserves?