And The Flowerman

As a creative person, however much you want to unleash your creativity, you'll know how difficult it can sometimes be to create anything at all.

However hard you try to be more creative, sometimes it feels like there's an invisible force field in front of you that holds you back from progress and you feel stuck, despondent and frustrated.

There are many different types of creative block and a number of reasons behind them.

The first step to overcoming them is to recognise what they are, then we're in a stronger position to take steps to move through them.

Here's one of the most common forms of creative block and some tips to overcome it:

Creative Block: "I have no new ideas".

How you know when you're experiencing it: You feel you can't come up with any good new ideas. Everything you do produce in the way of ideas feels like a rehash of something you've already done, a pale imitation of what you've done well previously. Or worse still, you can't come up with anything, even if it is an altered version of what you've created before.

Tips to overcome this type of creative block:

1. Change your surroundings. If we're always creating in exactly the same place, with the same surroundings, out creativity is not being stimulated very much.

So by changing our surroundings we can shake up our creativity, get some fresh inspiration and input, and jump start our creativity and ability to produce new ideas.

Here are some of the different elements you can change:

Your visual surroundings. Experiment with altering what you see around you by either changing what's around you in the room or studio you create in or going somewhere else entirely and creating.

Change the sounds around you. The easiest way is to use music in the background or on headphones. Using different types of music can have a very powerful effect on our creative mood and output.

Use different scents. The scents around you also can stimulate your creativity ideas. Either use scented oils or candles or take yourself to different places where there are strong natural scents, such as in a flower garden, or near a freshly cut lawn.

2. Change your outlook. If we always look at things in exactly the same way we never stimulate our creativity and challenge ourselves to come up with new ideas.

Use a series of different questions to get new perspectives and give yourself prompts to create.

Here's an example of a few:

Q. What would I paint if I had a budget of f1 million? What if I had just f10?

Q. What poem would I write if I only had 50 words to use? What if I had just 10 words?

Q. What music would I create if I had just a four track recorder and no instruments?

3. Use a new technique. By always relying on the same techniques to produce ideas we can get stale and stuck. Or maybe we don't even have any techniques in the first place?

Here are some different methods to produce and store creative ideas:

Mindmapping. Use mindmapping techniques to brainstorm, create new ideas and form new connections between elements that didn't exist before.

Use a notepad. Carry a notepad wherever you go and get into the habit of recording ideas as soon as they come to you, to return to and develop in the future.

Hold creative collaboration meetings. Get together every month or so with creative friends to have an exchange of ideas and give feedback on each others' creative projects.

Feeling "I have no new ideas" is just one of the most common creative blocks we experience.

Experiment with the tips above to see how you can begin to overcome this type of creative block and unleash your creativity.

Learn more about how to by signing up to "Create Create!" - Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin's free twice monthly ezine. Subscribe today and get your FREE copy of the “Explode Your Creativity!” Action Workbook. Just head over to