Kyle Cease on why creative blocks happen: too many possibilities paralyze you, not too few. Stay in the room when it gets hard, use specific prompts like "write about your dad at a particular time," and treat creativity like an apple tree that must produce fruit.
Chapters
When I start this, I get about 10 minutes in right now, or whatever time, or 100.7, if I want to include both countries. And what happens is something opens up here. But most of us look at the first 10 minutes and they were in so much resistance that they might try to meditate for 10 minutes, and they feel this block and they feel this thing and they go, it's not working. And they get 10 minutes in, and then they look back at the last 10 minutes, and it was really hard. So the assumption that they make was, well, the next 10 minutes is going to be like the first 10 minutes. So screw this. I'm going to go to Starbucks. I'm going to go back on Facebook. I'm going to go back into the consumer mind so that when I do this again, I have to start over. But if you go and you keep creating and you start and you keep staying in the room and you keep writing, eventually you're going to have a story. And by the way, you know why you can't come up with something to write about is because you have way too many things. It's not that you don't have any. I play piano by ear and I'll tell people, I'll say, name a song, and they're always stumped. There's 97 million songs and they're like, ugh, a song. Like, oh, boy. I'm like, any song. Just say a song. I want to play it. Oh, God. Are there even songs Happy Billie Jean? No, just any. But if I say, name a Michael Jackson song, they'll say it a little quicker because I got specific, right? If I say name a Creed song, they answer it instantly. Because that band has two hits. Murder, Murder, Sid with Arms Wide Open. So now I'm starting to have fun up here. Because it's. What we're here to do is just have fun, right? This is a playground. So as I stay in the room and I have to stay in the room because I'm contractually obligated to, I can't in the middle of this go, screw this, it doesn't work, and go to Starbucks. I have to stay here. So what happens is it unfolds. This is what meditation does. If you stay in the room, this is what creating does. If you stay in the room and you have so many things you can talk about, but you don't understand that. So if I said, what are you going to write about? You'll be stumped. But if I said, write about your dad, you'll be quicker and If I said write about your dad when you went to that restaurant when you were 16, you got something. That's the start. So the problem isn't that you don't have anything. The problem is you have too many things to talk about. And you're just creative machines. You're just apple trees that are just here to do the apples. That's all you're here to do, is just make apples. But most imagine apple trees that just don't all day. They just don't. They just do everything they can to addictively stop themselves from making apples. You're here to make apples, and you're stopping yourself from making apples. That tree will get sick. Right? Because it's not doing what it's here to do. It's blocking itself. It's trying to get other apple trees apples. For some reason. It's like, I'm gonna get as many apples. Dude, you're apple trees. You just make the apples. You're unlimited money. You don't have to do anything. If you say how you're assuming that it's out there. You are this unlimited flow of money. But people don't understand that. And one of the reasons are because they hoard their money so much. If you hoard your money, that would be like eating food and just never going to the bathroom. Could you imagine? If that's how you thought it works, I'm just going to eat as much as I can and never crap. And if I do crap, I'm going to have a coupon to make sure it's very little. So what happens is you create a space in your mind and your thing where you're saying, who I am is my money, so not who I am is the thing that can make it. Who I am is the flow.
