When Creativity Hits the Brakes

Knowing When to Stop and When to Keep Going

It was time. I knew it. Had known for a bit, actually, but felt too excited and afraid to take the next step and put brush to canvas and begin skinning the Napali cliffs in my painting with color.

The underpainting was perfect and so far into the land of unexpected success that I almost wanted to call it done. Almost.

What I wanted more than perfection was exploration and full expression. I didn’t want to see part of the thing, I wanted to see it in its wholeness.

So I put brush to canvas.

About 4 hours later I realized I had created a new color that could only be called Dead Vampire Skin while completely obliterating the perfect blending of light and shadow in the underpainting. 

I felt completely devastated. All the many steps it took to get the piece from live experience to sketch to grid transfer to underpainting flashed through my mind on repeat.

The hours. The days. All for nothing.

Except for inventing a color Pantone would never pick up.

The Fine Art of Creative Intuition

We’re never alone when we’re creating, even though creating can feel a lot like being lost alone in the wilderness. Our creative intuition, wisdom guide, and connection to positive energetic force is always with us. So too is our connection to our inner critic and inner imposter who seemingly threaten not only our hopes and dreams but also our existential existence. 

Both our intuition and inner imposter influence creative flow, impact our process, and inevitably show up in the final product. 

How our intuition and imposer show up varies, as does our response. Sometimes we listen to our wisdom guide and gently ignore the imposter, while other times we ignore the clear, intuitive directions that whisper things like “It’s time to stop.” 

Figuring out your source of truth in the moment is tricky. You could probably call it an art in itself.

What If Things Are Going Well: Celebrating Success While Avoiding Overindulgence

There is a sweet spot in creative flow and process where ease and dynamic forward momentum merge. There is no push or pull. No exhaustive efforting. Just maximum creation and the creator–you.

It’s a heady space for sure and one that challenges our ability to stay humble while remaining completely open to our power and influence. Overcompensate for your awesomeness by leaning too far into humility and you halt flow in its tracks. Get too comfortable or high riding the wave of success and you open the door for complacency and detached focus.

What If Things Aren't Going Well: Dealing with Setbacks and Embracing Failure

The flip side of the creative sweet spot is the creative freefall into failure. Sometimes the failure freefall sneaks up on you or drops in out of nowhere. Other times, it’s a slow burn you’re completely aware of and seemingly powerless to redirect.

The longer I do this work the more I believe bypassing the felt experience of failure straight into high-vibe reframing is a recipe for getting exactly what you don’t want–repeating the cycle of what just happened and solidifying internal stories around personal power, worth, and ability.

Overall, surrendering to failure is about adopting a growth mindset while remaining emotionally open and fluid within your experience.

Surrendering to failure doesn’t mean giving up or accepting failure as the final outcome.

Surrendering is about awareness and acceptance–awareness of what happened and acceptance of how we feel about it and ourselves.

Growth and Resilience: Nurturing Your Creativity Through Challenges & Adversity

Engaging with failure as a creative catalyst is a game-changer. By surrendering to failure we embrace the fact that failure is not a reflection of our worth or abilities but rather an opportunity to deepen our connection to growth and development–moving closer and closer to expressing our full potential. 

What’s not actually necessary (or really very helpful at all) is shutting down our emotional experience or using it as a shame-tool to facilitate “fixing.”

When we open and surrender to the full measure of our experience as failure happens we do some really important things for deepening creativity and expanding impact:

1. Practice accepting reality: You acknowledge that failure occurred and don’t try to deny or downplay it. Facing reality allows you to engage with the situation honestly and intentionally choose your next steps. If you can accept reality when you’re in failure freefall, imagine what’s possible when you apply the same skills to success.

2. Promote creative thinking: When you fail you’re forced to analyze what went wrong and why. Ironically, this leads to identifying what went right while practicing perspective-shifting and imaginal projection (e.g. imagining different processes and outcomes)--both of which are absolutely essential to outstanding creative work.

3. Reduce fear of failure: The scariest things hide in the dark. Surrender shines a light when fear creates darkness and creates movement where otherwise we may stagnate in our own humanness. Over time, practicing surrender during and after failure reduces our fear and increases trust in our creative process.

The Role of Intuition in Creative Decision-Making: Trusting Your Gut Feeling

So with all this in the mix, how exactly do you know when it’s time to stop painting the painting, writing the copy, or designing the website?

With any creative journey, it’s a delicate balance between intuition, self-awareness, and experience. It involves recognizing when you’ve drifted off-path, fallen in a swamp of some kind or simply reached the stage where additional changes may do more harm than good (a.k.a picking at something when it’s quite perfect as-is.)

Here are some things you can do to assess whether it’s time to stop or time to move forward:

1. Check-in with your gut. Often we have an instinctual sense of when something is complete or when it’s not but we should totally stop working on it. Listening to and trusting your intuition will help you know what to do next.

2. Focus on the essence: Connect with the core message or feeling you’re trying to convey through your work. If you feel you’ve captured the essence of your vision, it might be a good time to stop.

3. Set intentions. Before starting a piece set specific intentions or goals you want to achieve. When you’ve met those objectives, it might be a signal to stop.

4. Time away. When is the last time you took a meaningful break from your work? Taking breaks provides a fresh perspective when you return and an opportunity to recharge and refuel your tank.

Remember creating impact is a process. Sometimes we need to hit the breaks and walk away to gain the perspective, rest, or inspiration we need to keep moving forward.