There is a very famous film of Picasso painting live. About halfway through creating an effortless masterpiece he says “ Ca va tres mal” (it’s going very badly). Even someone like Picasso struggled to get a painting to go where he wanted it to go. It’s his self-belief, confidence and self-trust that allows him to work through the “bad” stage and experience that tells him that he can make it right. I’m certainly not in that league, but that helped me to understand that I should push through (although sometime you can try too hard and take a sketch too far) and trust my instinct.
In his remarkable book “Atomic Habits” James Clear suggests that the solution doesn’t lie in trying harder, but instead trying smarter and working with how our brains work. Working in small, simple, and achievable steps is the way to achieve successful and lasting habit change.
Creative thinking is something we can all train ourselves to do. This video explains the relationship between Creative Thinking and Emotion and how Emotions inform everything we do.