Creativity Blocks #001: Fear of Ridicule

by Tom Evans | May 27, 2011 | Timing

There are many blocks to being in your creative flow.

Here are just some of the things that stop us in our tracks:

• Fear of ridicule
• Fear of failure
• Fear of the unknown
• Fear of success
• Lack of time
• Lack of talent

– these are of course all subjective perceptions and can be dealt with and removed relatively easily.
In this series of short blogs, I’ll explain a little about why and how these issues manifest and give some simple tips to get around them.

The Fear of Ridicule

This is really common. The best way to avoid being ridiculed for your creative output is not to generate anything at all. Our unconscious minds protect us from harm by inventing loads of ways for us to avoid being ridiculed.

Signs that this is happening in your life are:

• Procrastination
• Being a busy fool
• Loads of half written manuscripts, unfinished sketches or musical samples

A classic trigger for this might be a teacher marking down an essay you wrote at school or you forgetting your lines in a school play. I did this in a nativity play and got demoted from Jesus to an innkeeper and then from an innkeeper to an angel without wings on the back row of the chorus.

As a knock on result, I used to have a repetitive dream of freezing as the lead guitarist on stage when playing with Pink Floyd or The Who. Since I eventually played a solo classic guitar piece at a local arts centre, the dream has not returned. When I released the audio version of my first book, I allowed that classical guitarist to come out to play.

Putting Your Head Above the Parapet

The simple way around this fear is to start creating and ‘publishing’ small bits of work and discovering that you don’t get shot down in flames.

The good news is there are loads of really good, free and supportive places online to do this.

For writers:

Your blog

Tweet a story or sample chapters on the brilliant Twimagination

Or submit your whole story to somewhere like Authonomy

Or throw all caution to the wind and just publish on Kindle Direct Publishing

I did this for my proto-novel Soulwave and the first reviews have encouraged me to dust it off and finish it …

For musicians:

Publish samples on Soundcloud

or AudioBoo – I love showcasing talented (yet shy) musicians on The Zone Show

or of course YouTube – see this Mashable blog on artists picked up on YouTube

For artists:

Post your material to TwitPic

or artist communities like the appropriately named FoundMySelf

or why not sell your art using sites like ImageKind ?

So, in summary, there has never been a better time to flex your creative muscles … so get creating and posting, you never know who might spot your nascent talent …

P.S. some of these links are blatantly self-promotional – please add your examples below and links to any sites you use !!

P.P.S. For cases of deep trauma though, these techniques might not work so do get in touch as this is what I specialise in dealing with.