Do you wonder how to overcome a creative plateau?
Have you reached a plateau with your work? And you wonder how to overcome a creative plateau?
Every once in a while you as a creative person may hit a plateau with your work.
You may face a learning plateau that can be overcome by persistence, practice and being out of comfort zone. The other one is when you reach a certain level of noticeable craft.
The second one is more dangerous than you can think.
Whether you are a photographer stuck with stagnant style and want to increase your photographic quality, a writer stuck with your craft, style, voice, and vocabulary, a painter with same brush strokes and design patterns, or an entrepreneur with a business model that isn’t giving you results as once it used to give: You realize that you are stuck at one level, and you need to level-up.
That’s when you realize that you’ve hit a creative plateau!
Stagnancy is Poisonous.
One cannot go far with that kind of stagnancy. Floating alone won’t take you to the shore.
Stagnancy is part and parcel of every work. But sometimes that’s not enough to make us realize, at times after a long time that you realize that it’s not same anymore.
Why wait for a such an event?
What if you can boost your creativity?
Imagine if you know that one thing that will help you to come up with an idea, just right before you proceed with your creative work.
What if you can get your creative juices flowing?
How’s that possible? How can you overcome a creative plateau in your work?
Good questions.
I’m going to tell you in a minute but before that, I want to share what happened to me that led me to share it with you, the way to gear-up.
My morning routine is to sit with a cup of coffee. To fill up blank pages with words.
But a week back, my work tarnished. My work suffered. I suffered.
“I had to take a quick action,” I said it to myself in disgrace.
I had two option –
Option one to quit and move on to something else that will give me a short-term gratification.
And the other option to sustain. To find out my way through a rough patch.
Argumentatively, the first option is easy and worse option. Only losers select the first option thinking that “Rome was not built in a day” is just another saying rather than the truth and fact.
When one stall at work, then doubt arises in our mind –
Is my work good enough?
Yes, the world needs you, and your work.
So, I decided to find out my way to overcome a creative plateau.
How To Overcome a Creative Plateau?
Being gritty was the only option for me. Though personally I would have opted to be on my toes and cracking my brains. I chose to watch a movie.
I picked Forrest Gump that night.
It was different than usual, because, at the back of my mind, I was still thinking about my work.
How to overcome stagnation?
Movie got over, but 3 things remained in my mind:
- “Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
- “Jenny” and lastly, not oddly,
- “Run, Forrest Run!”
All three instantly became part of my thinking mind.
But the one that hit the home for me was, “Run, Forrest Run!”
Guess what I did the next day? Yes, you are right. I said to myself why not give it a try and hit the road.
The results were phenomenal, at least for me. I was more enthusiastic, confident and with more ideas in my notebook.
It didn’t happen overnight. It took me more than a week, to pull off myself from that stagnant point.
Here’s what I did:
- I started running.
- Initially, in the park, but I’m not a morning person, so I changed my schedule to evening.
- Started running on a treadmill for 15 minutes as a start, slowly increasing the time till my body, and mind gets trained to the change.
Although there’s a difference between running in the park and on a treadmill, the result is more or less same, for your creative work.
You may want to know the answer to these 3 Q’s
- Why should you Run?
- Does running have any effect on your mind apart from the body?
- What impact does it have on your creative work?
1. Why should you Run?
Apart from the fact, that running keeps you healthy, improve lung system, reduce fat thereby lowering the blood pressure and strengthening the heart, there is one more thing that you as a creative person must consider, and that is, Endorphin.
How running helps to overcome a creative plateau?
Get your creative juices flowing, with my friend Endorphin.
Yes, you read it right.
But we are not going to go into much detail except the basics to ensure that you understand and use it to overcome creative plateaus.
Running for a short time may or may not have that lasting effect on your mind and body.
But anything more than 30 minutes will take a toll on your body initially, so one has to raise the bar of duration with every time you are out there.
Within a week or so you must be able to run more than fifteen minutes. Running help you to get your blood and oxygen flowing to your brain, and when you hit the target of running approximately 30-45 minutes you will hit the bull’s eye; Something magical will happen – Your body will secrete Endorphins.
- What is Endorphin?
It’s a chemical that’s secreted by the body. Endorphins are like morphine – but that are released within the body after certain activity. They help to block pain and enable you to experience euphoric feelings.
It will help your stagnant mind to take charge and overcome a creative plateau.
That sounds great, right?
Here’s a small video by Livestrong on describing Endorphins:
- Should you care about it?
Yes!
When Endorphins are secreted in your body, it triggers a positive feeling, like I said, I was more enthusiastic and full of ideas to jot down in my notebook.
It helps you to diminish the perception of pain, and thus you will forget all the miseries that life offers. You will straight away get down to work. For me, I managed to overcome my so-called writer’s block.
One thing that happened to me when I started running and still continue whenever I run for more than fifteen minutes is that my level of concentration increases.
Focus is only on each part of my body.
That way you just keep a focus on yourself and nothing else, perhaps, you may want someone to press pause and stop button.
Don’t forget Creativity Thrives On Change.
By initiating this act of running, I’m giving momentum to my body and so to my mind.
Hint: Stagnancy of Body may lead to Stagnancy of mind.
You better be running to keep your mind moving.
I know, I’m bored too. But stay with me.
It was difficult, at least for a lazy person like me to tie the knots of shoe lace and run.
But when your work doesn’t give you the results you want to try everything under the roof to pull it off.
Are there any other ways –
- Ways to get Endorphins secreted in your body?
Running elevates the levels of endorphins. Other cardiovascular exercises are not much useful, and that’s why it’s called as “Runner’s High.”
Other ways:
Clinical researchers reported that acupuncture also effectively raises endorphin levels. Resource
Hot, Spicy food, Rich Chocolate and Ginseng. Resource
2. Does running have any effect on your mind apart from the body?
Runner’s High leads to secretion of endorphins that give you a “Feel Good”, feeling.
Your mood may reflect in your work. Sometimes you don’t feel like working but you have to, and that does get reflected.
But if you run before starting your craft, you will be active and confident enough to hit home. And may end up with much better results.
Other significant benefits of running:
- Improves self-esteem.
- Change your thoughts from negative to positive – it will affect your work.
- Reduce stress – come on, who doesn’t like being stress-free.
- Increase your ENERGY LEVEL.
3. What impact does running have on your Creativity or would it help you to overcome a creative plateau?
Research shows that it improves convergent and divergent thinking.
Check out what Thoreau has to say,
Take Away:
You better be running to keep your mind moviing. Click To TweetUntil Then
