How to Be Creative When You Don’t Feel Like It

As we transition into fall and spend more time indoors, it’s a great opportunity to reconnect with our creativity.

We all know that being creative is good for our nervous system, boosts work performance, and helps us be a better human to our loved ones.

What can you do when that little voice in your head—the one that tells you not to bother, that you’re not good enough, and tells you not to try—starts to take over?

Why Creativity Matters

Creativity isn’t about producing something beautiful or meaningful. It’s about replenishing your energy, engaging in play, and giving your mind space to wander without a clear purpose or goal in mind. In fact, being too focused all the time can be counterproductive. Making time for creativity is a powerful way to reconnect with your values and get back on track. 

What About When You’re Too Hard on Yourself to Enjoy being Creative?

You might be thinking, “Okay, I get it. I should be creative, and I want to be creative. But what happens when I start feeling worthless because my drawing doesn’t turn out the way I wanted?” This is where your inner critic comes in—the voice that questions your worth, especially when you’re trying to relax or enjoy yourself.

We all have that inner critic. It’s the voice that pops up whenever we try to start something new, asking, “Who do you think you are?” or “Why do you think you’re worth it?” The key to moving forward is to accept that your inner critic will show up—and to approach it with curiosity instead of avoidance.

With time and practice, your inner critic can go from feeling like an enemy to becoming your ally.

Why Your Inner Critic Is There

This might be surprising, but your inner critic is trying to help you. It developed out of necessity when you were younger. Stepping in when there wasn’t a kind, supportive presence to guide you through. Your inner critic’s goal is to protect you from feeling overwhelmed and vulnerable. Your inner critic is caring for you in its own way, even if it’s not helpful in the present.

Your job isn’t to dismiss or avoid the inner critic but to sit with and allow yourself to have new experiences, even when they’re uncomfortable and triggering to your inner critic.

Different Ways to Approach Your Inner Critic

Accept Its Presence: Acknowledge that your inner critic is part of the creative process.

Invite It In: Instead of pushing it away, consider inviting your inner critic into the experience too.

Focus Somewhere Else: Find something positive or neutral to notice or think about, The more you focus on your inner critic and what it says, the more powerful it can become. 

Treat it with kindness: This one is really hard. Because your inner critic can be so mean. The inner critic needs self compassion more than anything else. Before you can change a behavior, you need to meet the behavior where it’s at. 

Give It a Job: Your inner critic can be useful in tasks that require a critical eye. Think about activities like cleaning, editing, budgeting, or recipe testing. Is there a list of tasks where your inner critic could actually be really helpful? List them out.

Working with your Inner Critic

If you want to be creative, it’s important that your body feels comfortable. If you can’t take a deep breath or relax your body, you cannot freely express yourself. Here are some things to implement as you work on being more creative. 

Reflect on your relationship with creativity. Journal about it, ask yourself how you feel when you think about sitting down to _______. Do you have people in your life that modeled being creative? How does your family and culture feeling towards creativity? How do you want to feel when you are being creative? Are you wanting to be creative? Or are you trying to make something?

Set the Scene: What are some things that you already do to help yourself relax and feel good? Is there a certain part of the house or music that you want to listen to? Do you need to move your body first and then sit down to be creative? Brainstorm about what you need to create an environment that makes it so comfortable that you want to desire to express yourself and how you feel. 

Use a Timer: Like any new habit, creativity takes practice. Start by setting a timer and committing to just showing up. Don’t expect miracles in the first 10 attempts—focus on beginning and practicing. Don’t make it too long. Trying to be creative for a whole afternoon might be too stressful if you are new to this practice. Being creative for 30 minutes is uncomfortable but probably manageable. Start with where you are, before you focus on where you want to be.  

Commit to 30 Days: Habits don’t form overnight. It takes repetition for your brain to start recognizing the benefits of creative activities. The more you do this habit, the more opportunity for it to become second nature. After a while, you will notice yourself going through the actions of being creative fretting about it.

Do anything: Part of creativity, is breaking through your thinking brain and into your doing brain. The more you do, the easier it will become. It doesn’t matter what it looks like what’s important is the process.

How to Create More Space for Creativity

Breathwork: Start by connecting to your breath and noticing where you are breathing to, to calm your nervous system and create a container for creativity.  

Self-Compassion: Practice self-compassion when your inner critic shows up. Label what your inner critic is saying without attaching to the thoughts and feelings. 

Social Support: Find other people that you can share your journey with and get inspiration from. 

Allow the process: Instead of seeking feedback on your creative process, let yourself create without asking what others think. Create a safe container for your creativity where you can explore without judgment, good or bad.

Setup a space: There is nothing worse, than being ready to be creative but not having an outlet for it. Setting up a creative space is a different process than being creative. If you want to be more creative, set up the activity ahead of time so that when you have time to be creative, you aren’t spending that energy preparing to be creative.

For example, if I want to do some painting, I clear out a space at home ahead of time and get the paints out so they are easy to access. That way when I am ready to paint, I don’t use up the energy having to set up a space to paint. It takes me 5 minutes to finish setting up and start painting.

Remember, creativity is a practice, it’s okay to feel challenged by it. The goal is to make space for it in your life, even when it feels difficult.

When You Need More Help

If you grew up in a chaotic, stress filled home that lacked supportive, present adults, creativity is likely very difficult for you. You might find it easier to focus on work tasks than sit down and draw the mountains. In your household, if work and service were valued about everything, there might not have been much room for being creative.

We know that creativity and play are so important for learning and wellbeing, yet we continually devalue rest and prioritize work. Allowing for a different and healthier relationship to creativity will take commitment and hardwork to break up with old patterns and unhelpful stories.

If you have been struggling with being creative or your inner critic is keeping your hands tied from even beginning to practice what I shared on this newsletter. Trauma therapy can help you.

Interested in learning more about working with me? I have an inperson office in downtown Lompoc and provide virtual therapy to adults clients throughout California.

Check out my website and book your free phone consult on my contact page to find out if I would be a good fit for you. 

Looking for a free resource? I have a monthly newsletter, that introduces you to working with the new moon and allowing more space for creativity into your life. You can sign up for the newsletter on the footer of my website.