I don’t know what to do
How many times have you heard yourself say those words? You’re stuck and you don’t know what to do next. So you do nothing.
Because you know that doing the same thing over and over again isn’t helping you get to the next level.
You’re stuck and don’t know what to do next. Seriously, how many more ebooks can you download or webinars can you watch?
And yeah, you’re getting all these great ideas but how do you sort through it all? How do you pull all this together to help you connect with more readers and customers?
You feel paralyzed because it feels like everyone else around you knows what they’re doing. They all seem like they’re growing their blog, making money online and signing up all these amazing clients.
Everyone is moving forward and you feel like you’re taking three steps back. You get so consumed with comparing yourself to everyone else that you decide to just nothing. You tell yourself, “It’s better to do nothing until I can figure out what to do rather than wasting my time doing the wrong thing.”
Then you flip back and forth between comparisonitis and frustration for not doing anything. You know you can help all these people with your products, services and blog posts. You have the answer to solve their problems and help them — but you can’t even solve your own problem!
Does this sound familiar?
The Eureka Factor
I’ve spent more than my fair share of time in that place I described above. And I knew that doing the same thing over and over wasn’t going to help me get through it.
Then came the day when I learned how to ‘think outside of the box’ during the process I described in the When Your Problem Has More Then One Solution post.
This BOX that people talk about comes from what we’ve learned about running a business or writing a blog. It all gets pulled together in our personal experiences.
While your experience makes you smart and gives you a path to go down, many times we allow what we know and what we think we should be doing to hold us back. Your box can actually limit your thinking and cause you to miss a new idea or new way to look at something.
All that thinking and sorting and testing … I had discovered that when I was stuck, there really is a process that I can use to help myself get unstuck. Something I like to call the Creative Insight Process.
Which led to me to finding the book The Eureka Factor and falling deep down the science of ‘aha moments, insights and the brain’ rabbit hole.
I always knew that taking creative breaks to help you work through problems was an out-of-the-box way of moving through an impasse but now I have the scientific information to back up my process and why it works!
Making it happen
The Eureka Factor teaches us loads of important lessons about how to reach those aha moments but for the purpose of this post, I’m going to focus on the things you need to have in place so you can start to have more insights with your work.
Change your everyday routine
Occasionally change up your routine – drive a different way to work, go to a different place for lunch, take your dogs for a walk in different neighborhood. Physically removing yourself from the same desk, the same chair in the same room will shake up your thoughts to allow you to start bringing in new ideas.
Think about what happens when you take your laptop a coffee shop to write your next blog post. All of those new things to hear, see and smell always seem to open your mind up and enhance your ability to be more insightful.
Don’t work on a deadline
This part doesn’t apply to working with clients or if someone is waiting for you to finish your part of the project. By all means, follow up to your obligations!
I’m talking about those moments when you’re trying to work through your email sequence for your sales funnel or your new strategy on Instagram and saying, “I’m going to get this done by Friday.” Putting a specific deadline like that actually hinders the process of your right-brain insightful process.
As they shared in The Eureka Factor, “Have the patience to wait for a breakthrough idea.”
Don’t give up your daydream
You know all those posts you’ve read about how to work out your social media strategy plans for the year or even doing a quarterly review, doing those steps where you start looking to the future does more than just helping you stay on track with your marketing.
Answering those questions about what you want to achieve in 5 years actually helps to bring about more creative thoughts. Thinking about things in the distant future broadens your mind to think more about the big picture rather than the smaller pieces and parts where you’re getting stuck.
To increase your ability to create more insightful thoughts use your imagination to think about different places you can travel to and the people you’ll meet. The simple act of long range plans or just a few moments of daydreaming disrupts your usual thought patterns and allows for the aha moments to flow.
Think about what brings you joy
Being in a good mood can bring about a creative breakthrough so to get into that place to receive insights, make your surroundings your happy place. Listen to your latest playlist, look at beautiful pictures from your last vacation, take a walk in your favorite place.
A positive mood triggers certain parts of your brain allowing for more opportunities for insights to appear as an option. As The Eureka Factor puts it, “A happy mind is free to roam the forest, while an anxious mind prefers to hide in the tree.”
Just do something
What would happen if the next time you felt stuck and didn’t know what to do, you tried something different? What if you decided to just do something instead of feeling those icky emotions and doing nothing at all?
What if you didn’t let getting stuck slow you down and you saw it as an opportunity to create something amazing in your business or blog? What if you made a commitment to yourself to try the ideas I suggested with the Creative Insight Process?
And what if I asked you to start doing this process like right now. Not next week, not the next time you get stuck. I mean right now.
Go to your schedule, your calendar, your online Google calendar, whatever you use — go to it right now and block off time to add in the Creative Insight Process.
We all the ability in us to have these amazing aha moments – let’s see what happens when you make a commitment to yourself to do something different.
Need some help with this?
If you need some extra help with this process of taking the usual things that we ‘think we’re supposed to do’ to grow our business or blog and reassembling them in a new and unique way, take a look at how I can help you with the Creative Insight Process as a part of the Social Media Productivity Sessions.
Together, we’ll work through the steps in the Creative Insight Process and I’ll show you how to turn your ideas into something that everyone wants to buy.
You’ll learn how to create moments in your day to be more creative and stop focusing on our problems. Being creative helps your mind wander into another place, allowing you to come up with the solution you’ve been struggling to find.
And you know when it happens.
You’ll come up with ideas you haven’t thought of before – something that can help your customers do something easier, help you make you more money or a discover a new way to pull that product or program together.
Being creative – like working on an art project such as coloring, going outside for a bike ride or gardening – can help you get to that place of insight to come up with your own out-of-the-box solutions.
This is what we do in with my coaching programs that include the Creative Insight Process. It helps you move past the walls of your box and gives you the freedom to consider all the possibilities available to you to help you grow your business or blog.
But the main thing you’ll learn is how to be open to new ideas to solve your problems. You’ll look at challenges not as obstacles but opportunities. You’ll be filled with more moments to be free to play with new and unexpected ways to work through your day.
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