How to Begin a Creative Project When You’re Worried You'll Mess it Up

Hey, Creative Heart!

Today, let’s talk about how to begin a creative project when you might be feeling worried you’ll mess it up.

Video Transcript: How to Begin a Creative Project When You’re Afraid of Failure

We all know the feeling, right? We’ve got this desire in our heart; we want to write a book; we want to paint a painting; we want to make a new offering in our business and, “Oh my God”, right up in front of our face, we’ve got this sense of doom. Because our mind is already throwing up all these things that could go wrong, fears of what people might say, and how it might feel awful.

Here are three ways I suggest implementing a little bit of self-nurturing to be able to get over those hurdles and into action.

Create a safe, sacred space for yourself.

This is where you may employ the use of really supportive tools such as affirmations. You might like to write out some inspiring quotes and put them up on the wall. I’ve done that many times and I find that’s a lovely way to start to re-trigger my brain into going, “Hey, it’s not all bad,” and, “Hey, these people want to support me … ” and start to counterbalance those negative thoughts with positive ones.

You might like to do a dream board, like a vision board, or you might like to clear out the things in your life you feel are draining your energy by de-cluttering your environment. Throwing out old, used paint brushes that have gone all hard and don’t work anymore, things like that. Make a safe, sacred space.

Promise yourself a sense of privacy.

I found when I’m starting something new, my mind starts to have all these conversations around, “But what if so and so doesn’t like that,” or “You’re going to look like a fool if you say this,” and all that stuff.

A way to get around that is by saying, “Look, we can just have a play and we don’t have to show anyone and, in fact, we don’t even have to tell anyone we’re doing it.” That way, it really creates this sense of privacy and safety to be able to begin.

Break it down into small steps or “micro movements”.

Once you’ve got your safe space around you, you’ve got a supportive environment and you’re feeling like you’re giving yourself permission to enjoy a sense of privacy, then it’s important to start breaking your project down into very small micro movements in little tiny steps that you can write down.

Then as you work on that project, you can tick those steps off as part of the overall project and that momentum will start to build your confidence. You’ll likely find you’ll be so involved in the manuscript, or you’ll be so involved in the painting, you’ll be like, “Hey, this is not so bad and let’s do a bit more of this!” Rather than sitting down on the couch and watching another episode of Friends. Which I, of course, have never done. No. 😉

Those are my three simple tips.

I hope they help you to get out of inaction, and start to feel safe to be able to begin a new project without a fear of failure, or despite a fear of failure, because I don’t think we can override fear. It’s a natural part of the creative process.

Have you used any of these tips before? Do you have others you’d love to share with us? Please write them in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you and we can all inspire each other along on this creative journey. Wishing you a beautiful day!

Be kind to yourself, nurture your creativity and I’ll see you next time.

With love,

Nicola xx

P.S. Now, if you’re new to my blog and you would like to get some help to get started with painting and creativity, I’ve created a beautiful 10-day free e-course that takes you through just that. Getting started with painting and creativity and you can find that at content.nicolanewman.com/begin. In there, you’ll be taken through how to paint an abstract painting, we’ll do some writing and some photography exercises and it’s loads of fun.