Thoughts and habits not conducive to the work:
- Believing you’re not good enough.
- Feeling you don’t have the energy it takes.
- Mistaking adopted rules for absolute truths.
- Not wanting to do the work (laziness).
- Not taking the work to its highest expression (settling).
- Having goals so ambitious that you can’t begin.
- Thinking you can only do your best work in certain conditions.
- Requiring specific tools or equipment to do the work.
- Abandoning a project as soon as it gets difficult.
- Feeling like you need permission to start or move forward.
- Letting a perceived need for funding, equipment, or support get in the way.
- Having too many ideas and not knowing where to start.
- Never finishing projects.
- Blaming circumstances or other people for interfering with your process.
- Romanticizing negative behaviors or addictions.
- Believing a certain mood or state is necessary to do your best work.
- Prioritizing other activities and responsibilities over your commitment to making art.
- Distractibility and procrastination.
- Impatience.
- Thinking anything that’s out of your control is in your way.
Excerpt from "The Creative Act: A Way of Being" by Rick Rubin
Start reading it for free: https://a.co/2rtliee