Unlock Your Creativity: Playful Strategies to Overcome Blocks and Get into Creative Flow

1. Introduction : Are you tired of those moments when inspiration seems to play, hide and seek? Being stuck is the worst. Whether it's creative block, being stuck in a mental loop, or just feeling a bit lost. I've discovered the best way to break through is to add a bit of play to help free up our mind, switch up our perspective, and solve our problems. Hi, I'm Lucy, a writer. Hodcaster, creative explorer and author of the book Living in Creative Life Every Day Play and welcome to unlock your creativity. Playful strategies to overcome blocks and get into creative fly. Working every day in a creative career has taught me the importance of having strategies and approaches to help overcome creative block and get back into flow after years of coming up with creative ideas on demand. I found that we all need a little help every now and then to shift perspective and relight that creative spark, Whether you're working on a piece of creative work or just living life, which let's face it is inherently creative. It can be common to find yourself a little bit stuck. But a few years ago, I switched up my approach. I lean into the Unknown and I decided to play. And I found when I did amazing things happen. This course is all about helping you explore playful tools to do exactly the same. To get unblocked, to find your creative flow and just feel less life in general. Across the course, we're going to cover a range of playful rituals that will help give you strategies and tools that you can use anytime you need a fresh burst of inspiration, a new idea, or simply to move forward in an area in your life. This course is designed for everybody, whether you're a professional creative looking to overcome creative block, or you're simply just looking to get unstuck in an area of your life. These tools and rituals are here to help you move forward and find that creative flow. I can't wait to dive into this with you. So what are you waiting for? Let's play. 2. Class Project : Hooray, you're here. I'm so happy you decided to join the class. In this class, we're going to use five creative rituals to help you get unstuck and give you new direction. They've been designed so that you can bring any problem idea or just general stuckness to them and still get yourself moving forward. But this isn't just an exercise to do once, we're also going to create an unstuck action plan so that you have something you can come back to anytime you feel stuck. Not just with one specific problem or creative block that you're trying to solve right now. Are you ready? Great. Why not start by downloading the class materials, grabbing a pen, and join me in the first lesson. I can't wait to see you there. 3. Switch Up Your Energy: Welcome to lesson one. You're here, we are going to dive right in with a quick energy shift. Now, this might feel a little bit awkward at first, but play often does. And trust me, it can make all the difference when you let yourself go. And allow yourself to be a little bit silly. So why not start practicing now? To start off, we're going to get out of our thinking mind and into our bodies to help encourage that play to come out. We often when a problem solve, when we think it's something we need to do with our brains and we can get stuck in a mental loop. This is about switching that up. It's like if you're trying to solve a problem like cutting cheese and you try and use another cheese block to cut it, it's not going to work right because you're using the wrong tool. So what we're going to do is switch up into a different tool. In this case, we're going to move out of our minds and into our bodies. How? Quite simply, with a classic dance break, let's jump into discomfort together and start playing. First of all, I just want you to take a breath. Wherever you are, close your eyes, breathe in slowly and breathe out. Do this a few times just to connect with your body and your breath where you are. And then we're going to roll our shoulders and give them a big roll, a big let it all go. And then your mission. Go find your favorite track of music, your favorite song, put it on now, and get dancing. Let's do that. How did that feel? Maybe a bit uncomfortable at first, but I'm hoping that what you found is that you got a little bit of an energetic shift when you did that. And maybe created some space for some fresh perspective. We're going to take all of this positive creative energy and that little bit of space into lesson two to help staff shifting our problems and getting back into creative flow. I can't wait to see you there. Let's go. 4. Build Your Creative Stores: Welcome to lesson two. This is all about finding what lights you up. Now we've built that fresh creative energy. We're going to turn it into a powerhouse of inspiration for you. Remember, you can't pull from an empty cup. So as we embark on this creative journey, we're going to make sure ours is filled to the brim and we are ready to explore, shift our perspectives, and get unstuck. We're going to embark on a fun exercise which is all about discovering what lights you up. You may already know some of these creative things, but if not, we're going to go on a discovery hunt to find the things that make us feel joy and light, that creative spark. We're becoming museum curators of everything that makes us excited about the world. Think of it as building your own exhibition of joy. Imagine this, a space filled with your favorite works of art. Music that makes your heart sing. Movies that transport you, Books that inspire basically everything that sparks joy in your creative soul. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go on a discovery hunt. What we're going to do is we're going to go looking for those things that light you up from any area of art, the world, creativity in the environment, all of those things count. And what we're going to do is pull it into our own digital exhibition. This could be a Pinterest board, it could be a digital folder on your computer, it could be a playlist. Whatever works with the things that inspire you. I would encourage you to think of something mixed medium. So you're not just pulling music or just pulling images. You want a space where you can maybe have loads of different types of creativity, loads of different types of inspiration that help light you up. The goal is that when we come back to this folder, that we feel inspired by what there is in the world. That we feel a spark of possibility for all the creativity that we can bring together. The point is you end up with a space that you can come back to anytime you need fresh inspiration or just a little creative boost to solve a problem. So how does this work? Essentially, what you want to do is probably go and grab a laptop or a computer, or a tablet or phone, or somewhere that you can go online and open up to the plethora of all the amazing, creative things that are on the Internet. When you go through, start to pull through the creativity that you know and love. The songs that light you up, the movies that make you feel great. The images that spark that idea. Anything that makes you feel alive, excited about the world, and full of possibility. There are no right answers here. It really is. Whatever makes you feel great. I thought I would show you a little bit of my own collection to inspire you, so you know how to get started. So I collect everything on a Pinterest board because I find it's great to be able to have images there. Music there, videos there. And it pulls together a lot of the ideas that I have in one space. I also really like doing it like this, so I can scan through quickly and see what's going on. So let's walk through my own personal exhibition of creative joy together now. So here is my things. I love Pinterest Board. As you can see, I have a whole range of things from books, quotes, songs that I have on my creative playlist. Images that inspire me, projects that kind of light me up, different people, smart ideas of doing things like collections, creative projects. I even have some interiors on here that I really love. And I just find diving into things that make me smile. For example, I love Pixar movies and this series from Up Is Great. They're handwritten letter projects. This idea massively inspires me. I like silly little projects that make me laugh and smile. This is from my favorite scene in singing in the rain. The type of illustration I love to do, and I'm inspired by some Rothko painting, which is full color that I love, and the little prints, which is a book that lights me up and makes me feel great. Some studio jubilee art and these tiny little smart projects where people are doing cool things with college and different ideas. And that's just a small collection of the things that light me up that I know I can keep coming back to whenever I need a creative boost. Now it's your turn, Go and dive into the things that you love. And that light you up. Remember no rules. You can pick any medium you want. Anything that inspires you. It doesn't have to be art or creativity. It could be something entirely different. The point is that it is your personal exhibition that lights you up, your collection of things that makes you feel full of possibility and inspired by being in the world. What are you waiting for? Go and create that vibrant space of inspiration. And then meet me in the next lesson where we'll turn that passion into action. Ready, set, go. 5. Flex Your Creative Muscles: Welcome back. I hope you're buzzing with excitement from all of those amazing, creative, beautiful inspiration, funny things that you found and pulled together on your own personal board. What we're going to do now is take that inspiration, take that feeling of possibility, and craft it into problem solving. Now it's time to play with these concepts. In this exercise, we're going to open up our creativity and start working that muscle that helps us develop new ideas. For the exercise, you're going to need a piece of paper, a pen, and a timer. You can also visit the class materials and download a specially designed worksheet. In my experience, creativity is just like any other muscle. It needs a little bit of warming up. And that's what we're going to do in this exercise. We're going to start building reps to build that creative energy and just create more space to come up with different ideas and possibility. How are we going to do this? Quite simply with a word association game. So what we're going to do is take our digital curation board that we created in the last lesson, and we're going to pull out three words that jump out to us. From there, just scan through the board and look for a theme. It can be an emotion, it could be a color, it could be an idea, a phrase, a feeling. Any of these things all count. What you want to do is just scan through and think of three words that jump out to you. They can literally be anything. Whatever jumps out to you is the right thing. Remember we are playing here, So there were no right answers. Once we have those words, what we're going to do is play. This makes me think of game. It's a simple word association game that helps us open up the way we think. And allow our brain to make random connections, which is where we can bring new, fresh ideas from. I'll get started with an example, but grab a piece of paper and a pen and you can join me. So we'll always start the exercise and we'll go one word at a time. For me, the first word that jumps out is surprise. It's something that comes out a lot. So I'm going to write down surprise in the middle of one of those circles. Makes me think of if you don't have the worksheet and you just have a piece of paper, you can just write surprise and draw a circle around it. And get ready to draw a little spider diagram of all of the ideas of free association that you have. Once we've got that written down, we're going to set our timer for 5 minutes. Yes, 5 minutes. I know it feels a bit scary, but what we're going to do in that space is just force our brain to keep coming up with new ideas and new associations until we get further and further away into the world of the Unknown, the world of play, the world of silliness. And what we're going to do by doing that, find that new ideas and fresh possibility comes in. Let's dive in, pick a word, set your timer, and let's get going. For example, surprise makes me think of birthday parties or hidden gems or treasure. In general, it makes me think of tiny doors on the street or you know, where people make faces out of food. It makes me think of that face, that's like shocked face, I think. It makes me think actually of discomfort as well and a little bit of anxiety. It also makes me think of color and balloons, it makes me think of a party popper, and glitter and planning and thoughtfulness you see as you go around. You can be using ideas, emotions, words, concepts, they all count. It might be a specific color. For example, surprise makes me think of a yellowy gold also, like a confetti cal of colors. What you're going to do is just keep going, keep going until that five minute timer comes up. Once you've had your 5 minutes, what we're going to do is take a step back, look at the words that we've got, and then challenge ourselves to set a timer for just one more minute and see if there's anything else we can add. Anything else silly or absurd, or just in any way related to the words that we have on that page. Once you've done that, you can move on to the next word. So pick your next word, write it down in your circle. Set that timer and get going again. Why are we doing this? Word association is a great way to get into our creative brain. It helps us to see lots of possibilities and move ourselves from the usual barriers that we put up of what is normal or sensible or correct. Allow ourselves when we push that limit of time to just think a little bit more outside the box. And it is a great way to warm up our brain and start flexing that muscle. Now it's your turn. Go and grab your sheet of paper, a timer and a pen, and get started with your own word association. And then join me in the next lesson where we'll turn all of that possible thinking into even more action related to a specific problem that you need to solve or a specific creative block that you want to move through today. I can't wait to see you there. 6. Play The 'What If' Game: Welcome back. Now that we've got that fresh energy moving, that creative energy flowing, our minds open to different possibilities, now is the time to approach the problem or creative block that we might have and solve it. The way we're going to start doing this is with a game called What Now? What If is a really silly game that, just like word association, allows us to open up our minds to different possibilities. And quite often, when we get stuck on a specific problem or a specific creative block, we only see one or two solutions to it. And if those ones don't work out, we stop there. Well, the what if game is about not stopping. It's about coming up with as many different ideas as we possibly can. They can be as ridiculous as you want them to be. Because the point is, by expanding this creative energy, what we allow ourselves to do is to find actual solutions that we might be able to use. Or through a combination of the things, we create new ideas that we could try out or experiment with. Which is where play at its heart can really help us get unstuck and break through those creative blogs. Are you ready? Let's play the what if game. The way you play this game is absolutely pretty similar to the word association game that we just played. So what you're going to need is a piece of paper, a pen, and a timer if you want. I've also created a worksheet for this in the class materials and you can go and download that as well. Great, have you got your materials? Let's get started with the exercise. What we're going to do is start by thinking of the specific problem we're trying to solve. And the specificity here is key. Knowing what it is that we're really trying to get to will help us come up with all of these possibilities and new ideas. So take a moment now to think about what one thing you want to move forward with. How you want to get unstuck, what that niggling problem is in your creative work, or just in general, that you're trying to work through and write that down on your worksheet. I've got a piece at the top that says really define the problem you're trying to solve. For example, if this was me right now, I'm trying to come up with a name for a new podcast. I find naming things really difficult. And I've been going round in a loop, the problem I'm trying to solve is coming up with a name for my new podcast. Then from there I'm going to write, okay, the problem get really clear again. And it might seem silly that we're writing this twice, but the point is that actually by clarifying, we're opening up our brains to other ideas. For me, the problem is not finding the right words to summarize what my podcast is about. Okay, the problem is, I can't think of the right name for my podcast. Now, what we're going to do now, we have that problem defined, is set a timer for 5 minutes. Again, I know it feels like a challenge, but trust me, it makes such a difference having this expanse of time. We're going to set that timer and then we're going to play what if. The whole point of the what if game is you just start asking yourself that question over and over and over again like it's on repeat. And you keep going and keep going and capture all of the answers that come up. For example, for me, let's say I've set my timer and I get started. Okay, so my problem is I don't know what I'm going to name my podcast, but what if I wrote down all of the words that I love that are related to my podcast? What if I created three names that rhymed with each other? What if I wrote down random combinations of different words that I liked? What if I imagined an audience member of my podcast and what they would say about it? What words would they use? What if I imagined what the image of the podcast would look like? What if I created some colors that I associated with the podcast? I knew the name. I woke up from a dream and I knew the name. What would it be? What if I lived in an alternate reality? What would podcasts be called then? If it was the antithesis of the podcast that I was creating and it was completely different, what would it be called then? And as you go through, you can see that you can come up with the ideas for how you might solve the problem, but also the ideas in and of themselves. Right, you might actually come up with. Okay, well the antithesis of my podcast would be like, I love marketing. Marketing is great. Let's do it all the time. And then I can go, okay, so that's the antithesis. So what would the other version of that be like? I can start to explore and play around with those ideas. And what you'll see as you keep developing and working through those 5 minutes of what if ideas, is that they will get more and more desperate. Basically, your brain is going to be searching for more and more things and more and more silly ideas. But actually, the further down the list you get, often there's some real gems hidden in there. So now it's your turn. What I want you to do is grab that piece of paper, define that problem, set that time out and start your first round of 5 minutes of what if. And then once we've done that, we're going to pause and we're going to do another 5 minutes. I know you're like Lucy, Why? I thought this was supposed to be fun and we were supposed to be playing. Well, we are. But the point is here that if we don't give ourselves that stretch of time to get really, really silly and really, really out of our normal thinking, we miss out on these experimentations, on these new ideas, on this different possibility. So I'm going to challenge you, set that time again, one more time for 5 minutes and see what you can come up within that time. Maybe it's even a different medium. Maybe you want to draw something this time. Maybe it's a piece of music that comes into your head. Maybe you can kind of storyboard what a kind of film version of it would be. Or you want to grab some clay or something and model an idea, whatever it is. Just allow yourself to create something in those 5 minutes that pushes that idea further. And is playing the what if, what if, what if game in those 5 minutes. We can even go a level down. Get more elaborate in our what ifs and more clear on what that problem really is. Amazing work, you've done it, that is such a difficult exercise to do. I hope that you found that what you uncovered in there is may be a few gems and a possible way to move forward on that problem or product that you have. Hopefully, somewhere in here we found the makings of the next step and allowed ourselves to get started on solving that problem. If you haven't found anything, take 5 minutes to quickly review your sheet and see what jumps out to you. Maybe ask yourself, are there any themes? Anything that you feel a spark of inspiration towards that maybe lights you up and see if you can explore that idea a little bit further. Once you've done that, it's time to give yourself a pat on the back and join me in the final lesson where we're going to create our own get unstuck plan. That is going to help us anytime we are in creative block or feeling stuck in general or need that fresh burst of inspiration. What are you waiting for? Let's play our final game together. 7. Create Your Unstuck Action Plan: Welcome to our final lesson, where we're going to pull together everything that we've done to create our own unstuck action plan. The point of this plan is it's here to service whenever we need that, fresh inspiration, whenever we feel a little bit stuck or in a creative roadblock that we have somewhere quickly that we can come back to to use the tools that worked for us to move forward for this exercise, you're going to need a piece of paper and a pen, or you can download the specially designed worksheet from the class materials. Once you have that, what we're going to do is take the four exercises that we embarked on today and we're going to give them a review. Think of it as like when you were at school and you got that end of term report, right? It was like Lucy did so and so, and so and so and it's a reflection time on perhaps what we learnt from doing that exercise, what we liked from doing that exercise, what energy it gave us, and also what things we uncovered from it. And what we're going to do is go through exercise by exercise and review how they work for us. We're going to try and figure out what works well for us. For example, in the first exercise, we got into our bodies, right? We moved, we danced, we got fresh energy. And what we might find when we reflect on that, is what really worked for us was the music, or what was great was actually moving our bodies. And maybe we don't like dancing, but we could go and do a form of exercise, or go for a walk, or simply just do a big stretch. And maybe that's the start of shifting our energy. In the second exercise, we looked at our creative passions. We got inspired by the outside world and maybe that was the thing that really helped sparked us, right? So we can look at that and go, oh, actually it was the work of this artist that really made me think, yes, okay, I'm excited to go and do this thing. Or it was watching that hilarious Youtube video that gave me that passion and energy to go and do something. Or actually, by being able to pull everything together, I saw what was important to me. Or maybe it's the third type of exercise where it really is about silliness and word association and just keeping on going on a theme. And what we find in that is that actually we like having a timer, or we like having a boundary or the challenge of something helped us and that was a great way to warm up. Maybe we need to warm up before we do a creative exercise, or maybe we need to warm up next time we try and solve a problem. Or maybe it was in the last exercise where you found out that actually asking yourselves questions can be really helpful and maybe the what if question was the right question for you. But there could be other questions that are useful for you to ask yourself over and over, and over and over again until you dig down into the answers that you already know to be true. So what we're going to do is simply go through the worksheet and review each of those areas, each of those lessons that we've just done, and write down for us what sparked us, what gave us energy, what did we really enjoy. And just capture that on the worksheet. So for example, for me I know that the music was amazing and it really made me want to dance. It gave me fresh energy and actually having that little bit of music helps. I also know that moving my body was super, super important. And actually that's something that I would come back to time and time again. Because for the amount of time I spent on it, it really gave me a fresh boost for the second ritual. I also found that there were specific things of color that really lit me up. And one or two creative works that I find so inspirational that makes me feel excited about the world. Just so full of excitement that actually even just looking at those for a moment makes me feel the possibility of what I could create. Then for the word association. I love this exercise because it just really opens up into silliness. I actually find it quite hard to do, but I think trying to force myself to do 5 minutes of some creative warm up is really, really helpful. That word association is a great way to do it. I think it's useful if it's maybe to do with the problem that I'm trying to solve, so I'm going to write that down there. Then finally, what if ritual? I love this ritual. I love asking questions for myself. I find it really, really useful. It's good to know that that's something that I can come back to and be playful with. Also, I found that through doing that exercise, I came up with lots of roots of how I might apply my creativity as well, not just the answer to the creative problem. This, for me, I think is a really powerful game. And I'm just going to write that down, that this is a great one to play, even when it's something like, what do I have for lunch? Because quite honestly, I mean, that's a problem that happens on a regular basis. So I'm just going to capture all of those ideas now. And I would encourage you to go and do exactly the same. Grab your worksheet, write down what let you up, what worked for you, and then come back. Great, now you've done that, we're going to do one final bit on the worksheet at the bottom. What I've written is, next time I feel stuck, I'm going to try these three things. And what you're going to do in that area is write down the three most powerful things that came out from this unstuck action plan. Really what you want to think of is like, yes, if I could only do one thing, I would do this one And try and challenge yourself that those three are all really powerful and impactful things for you. And then write them down. Great, well done. You've done it. Congratulations By doing this worksheet, what you've done is ensure that actually you have something to come back to. So the next time you feel stuck, you haven't forgotten or just can't think how to solve that problem, you have three clear actions that you know you can take to move yourself forward in that moment right there. And then this unstuck action plan is your shortcut to getting back into creative flow quickly. And I hope it makes a huge difference in your creative practice and in your life in general. I would love it if you would share your unstuck worksheet plan with us in the project gallery. You can simply upload a photo of it or an image from your laptop or wherever you've been creating it. I can't wait to see the things that help you get back into creative flow and the little playful movements and things that have worked for you. Thank you so much for sharing with all of us and helping us all stay inspired to keep playing and to keep moving forward with our creative projects and in life. 8. Conclusion: Congratulations, you did it. Thank you so much for taking the time to step back into your playful self and nurture that creative spark that I know will keep you going. In your creative projects and in life in general, it's been amazing to go on this play journey with you. And I cannot wait to see your unstuck action plans in the project gallery. So if you haven't uploaded it already, please do now. I would love to see it. Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out and get in touch. I'll be looking for your comments and questions on the course hub. I hope you enjoy playing those games and they give you some fresh possibility for whatever challenge you're trying to solve or creative block you're trying to overcome. If you want more playful inspiration, you can follow me on Skillshare or Instagram or Tiktok at Lucy dot Lincoln. And of course, I would love it if you would leave a review for the course. It really helps give me feedback and know how to create more things of value for you and help encourage other people to tap into their own playful spirit today. Thank you so much for joining me on this play journey. It has been so much fun. I hope that you have moved forward, found that next step, and got a little bit unstuck. I can't wait to see you in the next time. But for the meantime, don't forget to play.