 You've hit a creative brick wall. In the past, when your ideas just didn't come freely, you've possibly turned to books for looking for inspiration, perhaps bought some new equipment or dabbled with different techniques. All in the vain hope that these ideas would unblock your creative flow. Rather than help you break through that wall, those ideas have actually sabotaged you and left you trapped inside this echoey box devoid of any inspiration. It is time to help you get out of this limbo that you find yourself in. All these creative people whom you admire, well, they suffer from the same thing too. But what is the secret that they know, because you don't, on how to unblock their creative vision? We're gonna re-evaluate three crucial elements to helping you express yourself freely. By the way, if you're feeling that this is because you have no talent, you're wrong. Comparison is the thief of joy. I'm sure you've heard this at some point and especially true when we look at the work of artists who we're trying to be inspired by because we don't end up mining the images for the ideas at their core, but rather we subconsciously make connections and comparisons between our self and our achievements or rather our lack of achievements against the people whose work we're enjoying. If you are not careful, these artists, these larger than life personalities who create the images that you enjoy, looking at, will completely overshadow the way that you think about your own work. What happens is that you are not looking at this for the inspiration of the figure, the quietness, but you're looking at it and thinking about what happened just a few hours after this photograph was taken. You need to divorce yourself from the personality, the creator and the work that they create. You need to look at this and think about the majesty of the sky at night and not everything about Van Gogh's life. The way to divorce yourself from this is to go to a library, to go to a bookstore, seek out works that you've never seen before by artists who you've never heard of. Don't look at their bios, don't look at their exhibition list. Simply enjoy their work without all of the emotional baggage that you've hitherto had with the images that you enjoy. Now that you are beginning to divorce yourself from the personality and the work itself, you're free to mine the ideas at the core of these images. Collect them and deposit them into a bank, a library in your mind, if you will, and allow them just to fill up, to gain interest so that you are able to draw on them later on for inspiration. Despite the fact that it may seem on the surface to you that the artists who you admire just simply created masterpiece after masterpiece. Don't forget that you are seeing a curated selection of their work. They too struggled with the process, but they overcame it as will you. Those artists and those creatives whom you enjoy, they understand one true thing which you are also going to begin to grasp hold of and that is that they are not constantly looking around to compare themselves with other people on their creative journeys. Because they realize that it is their journey and theirs alone. There is only one person whose approval you should be seeking and that is your own. It's time for you now to see how you can tap into all the interest that's been accumulating as you deposit those images in your mind bank. A few months back, I thought my baking game could be improved. A YouTube video promised chef quality crispy bacon in just a few minutes by simply throwing the bacon into a pan with some water and then letting it boil dry. When you are dissatisfied with your creative results it is tempting to think that the reason that you're being held back and blocked in your effort is because you are lacking some sort of vital piece of equipment or the technique that you're using needs to be updated and improved and completely revised. Think about the creativity in your mind in its natural state like this bowl of water. It's clear and it flows easily. Every time that you try a new process or a new lens you are adding flour to that mix because you are trying to have your mind think about two things at the same time. Before long that free flowing creative thing that you had at the beginning is now just a lumpy, gloopy mess. I fell into that trap when cooking the bacon. I spent two weeks attempting this new approach rather than spending two weeks improving my actual cooking skills, the core skills that I already had. Rather than mining new equipment or new techniques as a source for creative expression at the beginning while you are trying to get yourself out of this rut take the time to work on your basics. Get those basics down cold until they feel like they are second nature. And when they are second nature then your mind doesn't have to think about them at all. It can dip in and out of that bank and loosen up the creativity so it flows better. It isn't a crime to think about the technical aspects of the process before the event. Portrait photographers for example will set up their lighting. They will work out the ratios, all the things they need to do before the model comes in. Because that way when the model is there when they are in the moment then they don't have to worry about all of that prior stuff that they put in place before the session. You can employ this in any art form. So long as you are prepared and making a stage for which creativity can dance upon then you are going to have a better success rate of unblocking this creativity. By all means take the time to work on your creative abilities to work on your technical abilities but don't do them at the same time because if you do you are going to end up with this pretty gross sludge inside your head which is not really going to be helpful for anybody. On the 1st of January you often hear people making resolutions. I am going to run a marathon I am going to do a 365 day project or I am going to tidy up all these boxes. A common misconception within trying to reboot creativity to unblock that creative flow is that if you just put your nose to the grindstone if you hustle as hard as you can until you pass that magical 10,000 hour barrier when something mythical happens then you will just, you will break through it by sheer brute force. If you are already feeling underwhelmed and unmotivated about rebooting your creativity do you really think that committing a significant amount of time and effort into a lengthy project is really going to help you be reinvigorated or is it going to feel like a chore like all these boxes do? Michelangelo spent four years on his back painting the Sistine Chapel because he was already inspired. Your job however is to start small to exercise to do the warm-up before the main event. Oh Jesus Christ! The object isn't to make art it is to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable. That small empty echoey room that you originally found yourself in has started to expand we are filling it in with furniture there are new doors coming in here all the time. You add to these things by doing little projects something achievable, something you want to do that can be done in a short space of time. The more that you do these projects the more that you work and exercise this part of your mind then the more you will put yourself in that state where the art becomes inevitable. Remember it's okay to take a break it's okay to put the camera down and simply refresh your batteries. Sylvia Plath said that the greatest enemy to creativity is self-doubt. We know how destructive those thoughts can be and how they stop us from expressing ourselves completely. The next time that little voice comes up in your mind and whispers in your ear that actually you have no talent and this is really just this is the world's way of telling you you know that you've reached the end of the road have the courage to say no. Do you know I realize what's going on here it's just because I've got my mind in a muddle that I just need to reset I need to have the courage to say okay well that is not working I'm going to you know pull back and I'm gonna start again. I knew Matisse said that creativity does take courage. All of these people all these fantastically they all struggle with the same ideas the same problems the same doubts what you are going through is not unusual it is a completely natural thing because what you are creating cannot be quantified so you sort of think is it working? Well there's a simple answer to that do you like what you have produced? That's all you need to answer my opinion the opinions of others they don't matter one iota. Do this for yourself first and foremost. Throughout this video I have been speaking to you and I haven't had to think about how to make the words. This is because I've learned how to speak and you know art is the same you want to learn how to speak visually. I put together a video that will help you to train your eyes to see the world like an artist. I put it over here go and check it out and know you're gonna love it. Thank you ever so much for watching and I'll see you again soon.