7 Signs That You are Suppressing Your Creative Potential

“CREATIVITY TAKES COURAGE. ”― HENRI MATISSE

Photo: Kaja Koort

For some people, creativity is an absolute necessity in their lives. If they are not connected to their creativity or make space for creative hobbies, they feel out of alignment, distract themselves from their path and become self-destructive. You’ll recognise whether you are one of those people who need creativity as air and water for survival by asking yourself this simple question: would you do your creative work even if you’ll never get paid for it or hear any validation from your audience? For true creatives, it’s just in your bones — something you have to do.

Whether you are someone who has always had a dream of writing a book, paint, start your illustration business, coach others or become a creative entrepreneur, you are probably familiar with suppressing your creativity at some point in your life. To help you identify if you are still doing it, here are seven signs that you might be suppressing your Creative Potential.

1. Self-loathing

When you don’t put any time and effort into your creative pursuits, you’ll likely start filling that emptiness with different distractions and self-loathing habits. It can show up as procrastination, self-sabotaging your success (for example, not answering an important email that you know will help you towards something), finding excuses for why you don’t have enough time or making sure that you really don’t have any space for creative work. For some people, self-loathing can even go a step further and show up in the form of excessive drinking, gambling, soul-draining relationships and constant need for drama.

2. Jealousy

Jealousy is one of those feelings that we despise in our society. It’s something that makes us a “horrible person”, and it’s better to admit that we are never jealous. The truth is, jealousy is an absolutely normal feeling, and it is a point of expansion — an invitation for you to go deeper into your limiting patterns. Jealousy shows up when we see someone in their power and in creative genius doing the work that we would like to be doing, only if we would have enough courage to face the possibility of failure and being ridiculed. Usually, the fear of being laughed at will mostly only actualise in our thoughts, but it’s such a deep fear that can keep us frozen. When jealousy shows up, lean into it and ask, what are you trying to show me?

3. Emptiness and longing for “something”

If you are a person for whom creativity is an expression of your soul, an absolute necessity, and you keep running away from it, you’ll always feel a sense of emptiness. You might not be able to name it, it can be an unconscious pattern, but it sits there in the middle of your heart area no matter what you do. Sometimes it shows up in your interests and what you are naturally attracted to — the types of movies you watch, the books you read, the people you follow on social media or look up to in some ways. Do they have anything in common — are these about people who follow their creative dreams? Do they allow themselves to express their unique voice? Whom are you attracted to, and where can you find these characteristics in yourself?

4. Overthinking and self-doubt

When we distract ourselves from our creative work, we tend to fill up space by overthinking, overanalysing, drowning in self-doubt and finding “mental strategies” not to feel the cost of our procrastination. Creativity requires us to be in a complete flow state; it’s like channelling through something that we don’t quite know where it comes from or where it goes, trusting the creation itself. When we are in this state, there is no space for thinking. On the other hand, our thinking mind is driven by the ego which job is to keep us safe at all costs. The possibility of failure and being ridiculed equals danger for our ego, so it will want to stop us from pursuing our creative work.

5. Self-criticism

When you hold yourself back from doing what your soul really desires to do, which is to create, it causes friction, disappointment in yourself and feelings of letting yourself down. Each time you talk about your dream of starting a creative project or simply giving yourself more time to explore your creativity but don’t take action, you are out of alignment with yourself. Your soul is always listening. If you promise yourself to do something but choose procrastination and justifying the delay (even though mostly unintentionally), you’ll lose a little bit of trust in yourself. Loss of trust leads to self-criticism that will keep you in the loop of creativity suppression.

6. Unfulfillment from your day job

As creative people, we often dream about getting paid for being creative, but the sobering truth is that it’s just not available for everyone. Especially the idea of leaving everything behind and pursuing your creative dreams and hoping that it will pay for the next month’s electricity bill can be more harmful than we first want to admit. Trying to make money with your creativity immediately can create unnecessary pressure and is just not the crucial next step in your journey. Therefore, it’s very likely that you pay your bills doing something that’s not necessarily your creative passion. If you feel drained and frustrated with your job, maybe it’s not the job you need to change. Perhaps you can start by experimenting with giving extra time for your creative pursuits on the side and see how it might change your relationship with your “day job”.

7. Judgement of others

When you deny yourself the creative pursuits that you are here to do, you tend to look at people’s work who have permitted themselves to put their creations out to the world with judgement. You might take the time to comment on the minor errors in their work, find reasons why it’s just not good enough or how you would be embarrassed to produce something so amateurish. People who are here to create spend so much less time (I’d be confident to say they spend close to zero time) judging other people’s work and instead focus on their path. Put the focus back on you and instead of judging others, start creating your own.

Some of these signs might be hard ones to admit but with self-awareness starts the change. Take some time to ask some hard questions from yourself and do the work to change your patterns.