The normal creative process includes fits and starts. If you are attempting to create or innovate anything, you need to expect that there will be times of great apparent productivity and times when it appears that not much is happening. You need to accept that this is the nature of things, not unlike the seasons of the year. But there are some things you can do to work with this natural process, so that you maximize your own creativity.

1. Recognize that creativity cannot be commanded to appear. Any attempt to do so is likely to have an opposite effect. Any tendency to beat up on yourself or call yourself names blocks creativity. Negative states of mind such as anger or fear also block the creative flow. So the first thing to do is to take an inventory of your state of mind. If you are engaging in any of the above, do whatever you know how to do to stop engaging in those thought patterns. At the very least, leave wherever you are and go to another chair or another room. Take at least 10 slow deep breaths and gently and compassionately acknowledge to yourself: "This thinking pattern is not helping, I am going to do something different."

2. Get up and do movement of any kind. I am not necessarily talking about exercise, although that is good too. I am talking about walking around, swinging your arms, kicking your feet, bending and twisting. In fact, the more unusual the movement, the better. After all, you are trying to activate your creativity, so the more you move in novel ways the more likely you will activate your own muse of novelty.

3. Another thinking block to creativity is the need to avoid being wrong or the need to do things perfectly. Creativity is a process that includes many "wrong" turns. Let go of the entire idea of "making a mistake." Remember what Edison said every time he found that some substance would not work as a filament for a light bulb. He said something on the order of: "Well I am one step closer to finding what I need." Tell yourself, "This creative block is just one more step along the way of me getting to where I need to be." We are used to a fast-food culture. Some things take a while to percolate. It is called thinking. It is okay if you allow your mind to be a gourmet restaurant. No one has a 30-minute delivery guarantee on creative thought.

4. You cannot command creativity, but you can activate it. If you are stuck in one area, access creativity from a different area. Take a break from the project you are working on and do something else that is creative. For instance, last spring I was not getting anywhere with some writing. So I took a break and worked in the garden arranging new plantings. After about 45 minutes of planting, some ideas started to come to me and back I went to the writing project. What are creative outlets for you? Gardening, drawing, dancing, painting or woodcarving, playing an instrument, any thing that gets the creative juices flowing can kick start your creativity in the area that is blocked. Do that activity for at least an hour or until ideas start to flow. Allow yourself to get involved in it. Then go back to your project.

5. Ask your unconscious mind for help. I recently ran a creativity workshop. Before we began I asked everyone to think of a problem with which they were having trouble. Once identified, everyone was told to ask their unconscious mind to use the workshop to help them with this problem in some way. One week after the workshop, 80 percent of the respondents reported that they had discovered some new solutions to the problem.

There are a number of variations to activate the creativity of the unconscious mind. The most basic is a three–step process: 1) Review the situation as you understand it. 2) Literally ask your unconscious mind for help to solve the problem by revealing something new or putting something together that you had not thought of or by giving you a new perspective or by letting go of your assumptions. 3) Let it all go and do something else for a while (e.g. step 3 or 4) or for even longer periods such as a day or two. You can work on some other project. You can also go to sleep and ask for a dream. The trick is to completely distract your conscious mind from your usual way of thinking that may be blocking you. Then allow yourself to be open to whatever shows up. It does not matter if you are consciously aware of some epiphany. After a period of time go back to your original problem and start back in on it. Most of the time something new actually does show up!

 Written originally for w2wlink.com by Dr. Robert Schwarz.