How Overthinking Can Kill Creativity

As obnoxious as it is, overthinking is a common human experience. We can feel it while taking an exam, when we’re giving a major announcement to our families, etc. The reason I think of it as a “common human experience” is because it's an extension of emotions like empathy, warmth, and compassion. We care about other people in our lives so much that we’re constantly overthinking about their well-being, especially our families. Overthinking isn’t inherently evil; however, it can definitely affect a person if they begin to constantly worry about themselves. I attribute this to the fact that we aren’t nearly as kind to ourselves as we are to others.

What Overthinking Does

It’s easy to become self-critical when we overthink. It’s easy to attribute failures, for whatever reason, to our own abilities, or what we perceive to be a lack thereof. Eventually, this feeling grows and grows, especially in our creative endeavors. It becomes a hindrance. We no longer feel worthy, let alone capable, and it gets to a point where we eventually stop pursuing things that make us happy. It gets to a point where we no longer accept anything less than perfection.

This leads me to yet another term: perfectionism. The problem with perfectionism is that it can disguise itself as productivity. We tell ourselves we’re still working, still refining, still waiting for the right moment, when, really we’re just afraid of putting something imperfect out into the world. The longer we wait the harder it becomes to begin. How many stories have gone unwritten because someone felt unworthy? How many paintings will never be seen because someone didn’t push through these feelings? How many songs will we never hear because someone thought it wasn’t quite perfect yet? And that’s the magical word, yet, that we’ll keep coming back to.

This is where overthinking can become especially detrimental to our creative endeavors. The more we question our abilities, the more convincing those questions can become. A single disappointing result can turn into a pattern of self-doubt, and suddenly we’re not just questioning one piece of work. If anything, this makes us doubt if we should be creating at all. We begin comparing ourselves to people who seem further ahead, wondering why our work doesn’t look like theirs, or convincing ourselves that everyone else has figured something out that we’ve somehow missed.

What to Do

One of the best pieces of advice for overcoming creative overthinking is to surround yourself with other creatives. Get familiar with people like yourself, whether that be other writers, musicians, or artists. You don’t even have to be in the same realm of artistry, you can totally learn from people whose artistic endeavors differ from yours. If you’re a novelist, you can learn prose from a songwriter since both of your art forms are closely related; in fact, you may be able to learn more from them than other artists in your field because you are forced to think outside of the box. You’re no longer thinking as a novelist, you’re thinking as a novelist with songwriting knowledge. Any tricks and rules you learn from a songwriter can be applied to your writing. Sure, you might be breaking “literary rules”, and you may be bending a few traditional techniques, but artists can thrive on the saying: rules are meant to be broken. Art is meant to be explorative, new, groundbreaking, and speaking to other artists can absolutely change the way you look at your own art, pushing you to be more creative.

It’s also important to remember to breathe. When we’re in our creative spaces and zones, it becomes easy to be overwhelmed. A creative mind is a heavy one, often filled to the brim with ideas, perspectives, nuances which can absolutely affect the way we look at the grey spaces in our real lives as well. So now not only is our creative mind convoluted and heavy, but so is our reality because we’re looking at the real world with the nuanced lens that our creative minds do. This is when we need to remember to breathe. It’s important to deal with the emotions that come with creating art, because at its core, creating art is the most intimate we can be with ourselves. Keeping all of the emotions that come with this experience bottled up isn’t healthy, and it definitely doesn’t do anything for your creative process. Creativity is an outlet, of course it is, but it shouldn’t be the only one. It’s important to practice breathing exercises here because they help to expel these emotions when they become heavy. Simple, quick breath-in, long breath-out exercises are incredibly helpful. However, breathing can also look as simple as taking a quick walk outside. If you regularly take your pets out, or even if you’re just someone who goes on walks, take that time to really let yourself soak in nature. It’s hard to do this if you live in the city, but that shouldn’t stop you. There’s nature all around, and connecting with it is one of the most beneficial things you can do for your creativity.

Something else to consider is movement. Long creative sessions usually require us to be physically stagnant, especially if you’re someone like a writer who’s tied down to a chair and computer screen. I’ve recently bought a treadmill, which I don’t use nearly as much as I should; however, it does help me get in some movement on those sluggish days. With the cold weather right around the corner, this is especially important to keep in mind because it’s going to become increasingly easier to have lazy days, but movement keeps the blood moving, and in turn it keeps your brain up and moving as well. You don’t need an expensive gym membership for this either. As we established, something as simple as walking helps enormously. There are hundreds of thousands of videos on YouTube that are completely free and will guide you through simple dance workouts to home workouts with little to no equipment. It isn’t as overly complicated as it looks, but it is essential for our creative minds and our overall physical health to make movement a part of our daily routine.

What it Looks Like

Overcoming the way we overthink can look like many things, but primarily we can begin to feel a sense of freedom. We’re no longer tied down to the restrictions our minds have created for us, and in turn we’re more free to explore our creative spirits. A healthy, creative mind, especially combined with consistent movement, is also incredibly beneficial to your mental health. You’re able to look more objectively and logically rather than through the emotional lens that overthinking often forces us to see through. That doesn’t completely get rid of feeling altogether, but it means learning how to deal with complicated feelings without allowing them to dictate what we do next.

This is where the word “yet” becomes important. We often use definitive language when we talk about ourselves, such as “I can’t paint,” or “I’m not a good writer.” These statements feel permanent because we’re turning a temporary feeling into a definition of who we are. Adding yet changes the entire meaning. “I can’t paint yet,” and “I’m not a good writer yet.” Suddenly, this changes the feelings from permanent definitions of ourselves and turns it into a space where creativity can thrive. It’s important as well to remember that yet isn’t a promise of perfection, but instead it permits us to continue. We’re suddenly allowed to look at something we’ve created, see the problems, and see it as something to improve on rather than something that defines our skill.

A final thing to remember is that learning to overcome overthinking and to finally allow yourself to make mistakes in your creative endeavors is a skill that you learn through experience. It isn’t a skill we’re born with or one that we just have. It’s a skill that we build on, and an important one. When overthinking inevitably returns, which it most likely will, you’ll have built the skills needed. Skills like taking the time to breathe, spending time with nature, and remembering that our feelings and thoughts are not facts. We can remind ourselves that growth is not linear and that creativity was never supposed to be a perfectly straight path, and that we’re still becoming the artists we are, not the ones that we believe we need to be.

About the Author

Jocelyne is a senior at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and a minor in Criminal Justice. Her interests include reading, writing, and exploring storytelling with a focus on cultural identity.