Mental blocks. Who needs ’em?
Mental blocks are the worst. It’s a paralysis of all possibility and a complete nuisance for those reaching beyond their perceived limits.
Let’s talk about blocks. You’ve got your:
- road blocks
- wooden blocks
- concrete blocks
Then you’ve got your:
- stumbling blocks
- building blocks
- and the kind of block where your buddy is interfering with your amorous advances (that’s for a different blog).
Up a notch is writer’s block which we’ll immediately discount because there’s no such thing as writer’s block. How do I know? Because no one in the history of assignments due on a certain date said they couldn’t get it done because the words refused to flow.
I’m taking about the expert level blockage on par with arterial, esophageal and colonic blockages; the Mental Block. I mean the sheer abrupt halt of all useful output. Brain freeze without the ice cream.
A mental block comes upon you like a mountainous speed bump at a crucial point in the race where you’re accelerating to pass the leader. It’s the fork in the road that leads to a brick wall, the dead stop on all forward progress.
Mental blocks don’t announce themselves with a prodrome foretelling a cranial walkout. One second you’re typing away as the ideas flow, fleshing out your big manuscript and the next you’re staring at the blinking cursor wondering how you got there.
In my case my very-workable-to-do list becomes an endless parchment scroll of Impossible Things No Human Can Master. I can’t think or act. I just sit there tapping my finger in time to the blinking cursor (who wonders if I’m on a prolonged bathroom break).
Mental blocks are trouble with a capital Uh-oh.
There are a million articles out there (148,000,000 according to The Google) dealing with how to identify and overcome mental block. Oh look, here are a few. Honestly, I don’t care nor do I have time to rabbit-hole myself into an endless slog of all the data spooned up by so-called thought leaders. I don’t need to know how or why it happens because I already know: I don’t give my brain a break. If this sounds like you let me save you some research time and tell you what’s worked for me over the past thirty years.
Are you ready for some unscientific mega advice?
Nothing short of a total system wide shutdown and reboot. No, not a nap. I mean a shut down. Cease all productivity, all deep thinking, problem solving and list checking. No thinking, no acting, no, “gotta get ‘er done”.
I know what you’re thinking…
Nonsense. Untested objective nonsense. Trust me on this as I’d never steer you wrong. You have to force yourself to just be. You’ll want to push through it or busy yourself with meditation or yoga. Meanwhile the anxiety over missing deadlines goes through the roof like the space shuttle after a burrito party.
You must choose Full Stop now.
Do nothing and wait it out. I’m sorry it’s not more complicated. Any idea you come up with will be nonsense, any decision fraught with uncertainty, any creative impulse derailed by doubt. No good work will be done while you’re brain is on hiatus. Could take a day or (cue gasp) a week. When it happens to me I close out of my work and look at pictures of models.
Trust me here for I know what I’m talking about. This isn’t the same as Pressfield’s Resistance which I urge you to read about. This is an overload you didn’t see coming because you were humming along nicely until you forgot how to speak your native language.
Wait for what, an epiphany?
No, you don’t wait for anything because you’re busy doing nothing, remember?
- Enjoy the zero
- Take the mental break
- Don’t check all your precious online stuff (it ain’t going anywhere)
- Don’t watch TV (seriously) because it’s just another distraction making your brain buzz with fictional problems
Frankly, I couldn’t care less about A Game of the Walking Housewives of Slobovia and neither should you. You’re busy solving problems.
- Do: stare out the window and see your world
- Watch the clouds pass
- Go outside and feel the sun (or rain) on your face
- Smell the air
- Go for a run
- Do nothing
Soon you’ll feel something, a tingle inside your cranium. That’s an idea peeking through the gloom like a flower blossoming through a crack in the concrete. Instead of staring at it like it’s a two headed frog you’ll embrace it and see all the presenting possibilities. Another will come branching off that first one and so on. That’s when you know you’re out if it.
As confirmation take a look at your Zombie That Ate My Face to-do list and suddenly all the little things will seem manageable again and you’ll be excited (not afraid) to tackle it. The clouds break, the sun beams and boom! Welcome back, Idea Machine. You made it through.
You must remember process…
Before you do your happy naked dance remember one very important thing: this awful beating you just took is all part of the process. For me, I can’t run hot all the time and I’m no good at pacing myself. I don’t take days off and work until I’m bleary-eyed so I know the inevitable meltdown is coming. When it does, I have 30 seconds of freak-out and accept the bland empty space of nothing until the reactor cools down. That’s the only way it works.
File this under: There’s nothing wrong with you, you don’t need a self help guru or even a vacation (those are for later when you’ve finally finished something huge). You just need a time out and maybe a cookie.
Now go make something of importance, the world is waiting on it. I believe in you.
Tom Serafini is a writer, illustrator, motivator of dreamers from Brooklyn, New York. His first illustrated picture book, Ollie Bug and the Icky Sticky Thing From Space, will be funded through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign coming soon.
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