She was afraid of her own imagination

I remember a particularly vicious bout of depression in my early thirties.

My brain told me I was out of ideas and had nothing left to say as an artist. For the first time in my life, I stared at the blank page and couldn’t muster a single word. Good things simply didn’t seem possible for me, from a creative standpoint.

And I can still see myself sitting in my car in the parking lot of a drug store a week into this blockage, feeling hopeless and lost.

Thankfully, on the radio was an interview with this renowned author who said the biggest threat to her creative practice was, she was afraid of her own imagination.

That statement hit a nerve with me. Because I was clearly having the same problem. I needed to branch out from an artistic perspective. Take some real risks with my writing. Address subjects that were scarier, darker and more personal than anything I’d ever written before.

Sure enough, I drove straight home and started working on several new creative projects. Many of which never saw the light of day, but they did show me how to remain imaginative and curious about potential solutions my creative problems.

Are you listening to the inner voices you’ve previously silenced?

Openness is not the one stop solution for all of our suffering. But it’s a helpful starting place.

My recommendation is, find ways to free yourself of inner obstruction and opponent. Do whatever you can to enlarge and examine your experience.

If you indexed higher on openness, what might become possible?