Creativity Blocks #004: Fear of Success

by | Jan 1, 2012 | Timing

SpotlightThis  fear is one that can be the most debilitating. Say for example you are an author and you’ve cracked all the other fears and finished your book.

You may even have it printed and published … but maybe it’s not selling and you’re struggling to promote it … and yourself.

This is a fear that I have experienced first hand. One of the reasons I discovered about why it affected me so much was that when I was the most financially successful in my life with two businesses, this was when I was also the most stressed.

So I directly equate success with stress and used my creative mind to avoid success at all costs.

The signs that this is happening in your life are:

  • You jump on to the next project without really finishing off the last thing you were working on
  • You work on behalf of other people before you get on with your own stuff
  • You become a ‘busy fool’

And I am proud to say I have all these T-shirts.

Strategies for Getting over the Fear of Success

1. Redefine what success means to you – it doesn’t have to be about the financials and, of course, being successful without the associated stress is a success in its own right

2. Get in the habit of celebrating all milestones no matter how small and in what ever manner you feel, e.g. every review I get for my books, I proudly share on Twitter and Facebook

3. Have a listen to this short visualisation on Becoming Fear-less

listen to ‘Becoming Fear-less’ on Audioboo

Creativity Blocks #002: Fear of Failure

by | Dec 30, 2011 | Timing

The second major block to our creativity is the avoidance of failure. If you don’t actually do anything then you can’t possibly fail.

Job done!

Somewhat ironically, we can be really creative on how we go about this. As for the other types of fears, in nearly all cases, other behaviour masks what is actually occurring.

Typical signs that this fear is in operation include being a ’busy fool’ and finding you are always serving other first before generating our own output.

Low self-esteem and pessimistic tendencies can also come to play. You may also find you give up at the first hurdle and any sign of adversity. You become an expert at creative procrastination.

These are all the tell-tale signs you are avoiding failure.

The route out of this downwards spiral is one of the most satisfying things we can do – we must learn to enjoy being self-indulgent and to put ourselves first. When you do this, you will both earn the respect of the people who you have been serving and show them ways they can do this for themselves whilst also reducing their reliance on you.

These are seven steps to take:
1. Diarise appointments with your Creative Self for your projects
2. Guard them with a passion
3. Share these dates with those that might thwart you by crossing your boundaries
4. Before each Creative session, go for a walk or meditate
5. During the session, switch off all distractions – phones, social media …
6. When you finish each session give yourself a treat and pat on the back … I have a digestive biscuit and cup of tea and sometimes I tweet to the world to declare another milestone has been reached
7. Then, and only then, get back to working with and helping others … you will find they haven’t been waiting for you and were getting on with other ‘stuff’

When you are successful in this practice, you realise that the real failure was not to even try in the first place.

You are now ready to take on the next fear, that of the Fear of the Unknown …

Creativity Blocks #001: Fear of Ridicule

by | 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:

– 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.

listen to ‘100 Years of Ermintrude’ on audioBoom


 

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.

Karmic Rights Management

by | Mar 29, 2011 | Scribing

I am often asked by both new and experienced authors how you go about protecting your books in the digital age.

In these days when you can blog a story or submit an ebook direct to the Amazon Kindle Store, the Apple iBookstore or to one of many aggregator sites like Issuu, Lulu, BookBuzzr and Smashwords, what’s to stop anyone stealing and copying your work illegally?

If you submit your novel to a author community site like Authonomy, what’s to stop someone stealing your idea and writing their own book on the subject?

Well if you think about it … not a lot and it’s not much different from how it has been since Caxton invented the printing press.

If you produce a printed book, there is nothing to stop anyone photocopying it. How many times have you borrowed a book and read it and not paid the author or the publisher a penny? How many times did you not give it back?

For digital products, you can add password and enable DRM protection but there is nothing to stop someone telling someone else the password. Even if the digital rights management is tied down to a particular device as it is for Kindles, iPhones and iPads, there is nothing to stop people other than the purchaser enjoying the work.

I am sure when you write your book, you didn’t do it in isolation of any influences from other authors, friends, colleagues or teachers.

By far the best way by far to protect your work is to look at your behaviour and modify it so it’s karmically balanced.

Now I am not trying to preach here or be holier than thou – this is just good common sense and politeness and I too have fallen foul of not playing by the karmic rule book.

My seven top tips for karmic rights protection

1. Don’t run the fear your work will be copied

2. If you use a quote or concept from another writer, give them some credit in a Thanks section of your work or, at least, list their book in references

3. Be open to your payback coming back in another form other than the sale of your books

4. Don’t steal another writer’s work

5. If you like a book you borrowed, buy a copy or buy another book from the same writer

6. Give loads of stuff away for free

7. Be thankful for everything you receive

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– just think what it would be like to live & breathe in a world that worked to these principles, it’s within our grasp & starts with each one of us today

p.s. if you ‘breach’ the spirit of KRM, you will find others will ‘steal’ from you