Psychology of a Creative Mind

I have been thinking a lot about my mindset in regards to doing creative work.

I have always been very passionate about making art. More specifically Graphic Design, Illustration and Photography. But still to this day I have not done much of it consistently. Most people around me have heard me on multiple occasions telling them about how much I love doing visual art and design stuff!, which they respond to by asking “Why haven’t you?”. I have never had a proper answer. I always had the stories of blame on people and places for why I have not been making work and publishing. But those stories never satisfied me.

The split of having a strong curiosity and passion to be creative but not expressing it created a lot of internal confusion. My mental health deteriorated over the years. Lack of self expression and being my true self created obstacles in the natural flow of mental, emotional and physical energies. The internal conflict manifested as lack of enthusiasm for life, procrastination, anger and depression.

Meanwhile for distracting myself I was consuming a lot of material in different forms. To find the root of the agony. I was unconsciously looking for answers. Because I was in pain. I wanted a way to feel better. To get out. To be myself.

Most of the content that I was consuming was about tips, techniques and technology. Creating schedules. Using different tricks to force myself into being productive. Needless to say none of them worked. If anything, they made me more frustrated and feeling like a failure because I couldn’t stick with them.

Although in between all of those there were some brilliant work as well which thought me a lot about mindset and how I was thinking about myself. But because I was so focused on blaming external factors I didn’t pay attention to what I was doing to myself internally.

Until I had a serious break down. Forty eight hours of a crazy experience when I was sure I was dying. Zooming out of my life I got a quick run down of how I was thinking about everything. Retrospectively, a great lesson that I received to clean my head physically and mentally.

All of that brought me to the point of realising the source of all my problems in regards to not following my curiosity and creating the things that brings me joy is my mental state. The mindset is the key. Get your head right!

I would love to dig deeper into the psychology of creative people. The frustrated artists who are not sharing their art. I want to help creatives to get a new perspective on why they are not making and publishing. It is not about talent, opportunity or strategy. The first step is to get your head right. Once you do that the rest would fall into place. It is not easy either, but it is worth it, I promise you.

Sure, the strategy, schedules, techniques, specialisation, marketing and having a social presence are all helpful but the foundation is our mindset. The root of self doubt, imposter syndrome, perfectionism and fear of self expression is all in our mind. It is all in what we think.

What you think about yourself and how you think about life are foundations of where your invest your energy and what kind of return you would get out of that.