How to Overcome Creative Blocks in Your Photography

Best-selling Author Steven Pressfield is educating others on how to break through creative roadblocks with his novel “The War of Art.” After reading this inspiring book, Photographer Sean Tucker decided to make an online video to share his new insights about dealing with creative mind blocks with the world. Tucker's video focuses on the idea of overcoming personal resistance and overcoming negative internal monologues. By highlighting his own roadblocks and proposing solutions to counter-act them, Tucker is able to offer hope and encouragement to every photographer out there who is suffering from the inability to motivate themselves to get up and create.

The desire to create can be affected by many factors, including fear, perfectionism, overthinking, and “playing the victim.” Fear can manifest into a crippling condition which can stop many people from even trying to put their creative work out there. Whether it is the fear of failing or the fear of being found out to not know as much as others, this resistance can be the number one reason why people fail to try. One suggested way around this to turn negative self talk into a positive one is to realize that everyone has knowledge gaps and holes in their skill set. No one is perfect 100 percent of the time and that realization can help people to take control back of their creative lives.

Perfectionism is closely linked to fear of failure and involves an individual putting an enormous amount of pressure on themselves to get everything exactly right. Many people can not bring themselves to even start anything as they can not convince themselves that they will be able to end it well. Throughout his video, Tucker talks about how taking a longer view to things, rather than a short-term one, helped him to overcome his need to produce only perfect work. He speaks of the importance of focusing on “done being better than perfect.” This mantra highlights the emphasis being put on the whole expression of work over time, rather than each individual draft or revision standing alone.

Tucker also makes mention of his own personal tendencies to overthink things, compare himself to others, and critique others with an intent to drag them down. His honest and refreshing tutorial urges other creative artists to think about what holds them back, acknowledge the resistances, and then find ways to deflect them. His advice and final message is clear, when you don’t feel like creating, get up and do it anyway. There will be always be someone out there with more talent, better gear, and more knowledge, but when you are able to take control of the negative scripts in your head, it’s amazing what can happen.

Did you have any similar experience in the past or are you currently having a creative's block? How did you overcome this issue and do you have any personal suggestions? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.