What To Do When Your Creative Goal Feels Impossible
Recently I had that feeling again. Impossible. My summer vacation was nearing an end much too soon. (How is it that vacations always feel so long when they begin and before you know it they’re over?) I hadn’t made all the progress in my creative work that I had hoped to make. I saw autumn creeping closer. I looked at where I was and where I want to get to, and the road between felt so very long. It was like time was running but I was standing still. How would I ever get there? Impossible.
I think this is a feeling that most creatives deal with now and then, especially if you’re trying to do something for the first time. We can see clearly where we are now, we can dream up a destination but the road in between is fuzzy, perhaps a bit scary and so terribly long. We might as well be trying to fly, that’s how likely a successful outcome feels.
Ridding ourselves of these feelings completely isn’t very likely - it’s human to doubt. What we can do is to learn how to deal with them, when they invariably turn up.
Find smaller parts of the journey
When our goals feel impossible, they are usually quite some bit into the future. Whether you’re writing a book and wondering if you’ll ever finish it, or trying to reach out with your creative work and feel like nobody cares, or learning a skill where you still feel like a complete beginner, the path ahead looks long and hard.
In these cases, it’s good to find some closer goals to focus your eyes on. If we’re only seeing the now and the far away goal, it’s hard to envision the road between.
So find some “part of the way”-goals that feel more possible. Focus on those and what you’ll have to do to reach them. Step by step, they’ll take you closer without being completely overwhelming.
Hone your self-trust
The opposite of doubt isn’t to know for sure, it’s trust, belief and hope. If you struggle to believe that you can do something, you may be a little low on self-trust.
Those smaller goals mentioned above will help you with strengthening your self-trust as well. They will help you see that you’re actually making progress. You’re not standing still, and as long as you’re moving in the right direction, you can get, right? You just need some patience and persistence.
As you move forward, make sure to get very clear on what it is you want to create, and why you want to create it. Why does it matter? Why is it interesting? Keep this vision close at hand and check in with it often. When you’re tapping into why your creative work matters, it’s easier to believe in the work you want to do. And if others express that your creative work is valuable to them, save it for days when it feels like nobody cares.
Focus on the joy of the process
I often come back to this in my creative journey. When we’re too fixed on goals and the outcome of our work, we lose touch with the joy of creating. We forget that it’s important and a priority.
Then reaching goals become everything that matters, and that’s not a good place to be in as a creative. And because it’s not joyful, you’re more likely to give up.
When the journey is fun and fulfilling on the other hand, we don’t put as much pressure on the end result. The feeling of it being impossible isn’t as hard to deal with when we know we’ll enjoy it regardless of whether we get there or not. We keep going anyway, which will invariably take us closer our goal. So find that joy and make it the center of why you create.
Accepting uncertainty
At the end of the day, we have to accept that there’ll always be uncertainty as creatives. Every creative project has some level of it. You’re trying to bring to life something that is an idea in your mind, and you can’t know for sure that it’s gonna work out the way you imagine it. Neither can you know for sure how other people will receive it.
Maybe what you’re trying to do won’t work out. Maybe it will, maybe it will exceed all your expectations. We can’t know, and ultimately we have to be okay with that.
All we can do is to keep creating, focus on the joy of it and try to learn and improve as we go.
It all seems impossible before it’s done
Finally, I just want to leave you with this. All creative projects feel impossible at some point. All creatives doubt sometimes and wonder how the hell they’ll manage this crazy, stupid, wonderful idea of theirs. And yet, people bring their ideas to life all the time.
The author of the last book you read, the creative who’s work you admire. They felt it and they got to the other side. Don’t let the feeling of impossibility stop you from trying.
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