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Are you repeatedly sabotaging your creativity
There is a kind of stuck that doesn’t look dramatic from the outside. You’re still opening your laptop. You still have a notebook next to you. On top of that, you still scroll other people’s work and think, “I could have written that.” But for some reason your own ideas never quite make it to daylight. You save drafts. Or you half-outline posts. Perhaps you tell yourself you’re “researching.” Days pass. The idea that felt warm on Monday is cold by Friday. If that has been happening on your blog, it is very possible you are not blocked at all. You are quietly, repeatedly sabotaging your creativity.
The hard part about creative self-sabotage is that it usually wears grown-up clothes. It says things like, “I just want to make this better,” or “I should see what other people are doing first,” or “I’ll publish when I have a full content plan.” None of those statements sound wrong. But taken together, they put your work in permanent later. Elizabeth Gilbert said that fear will always ride in the car, but it doesn’t have to drive.¹ You could say the same about perfectionism. It can come along, but it doesn’t get the wheel.
When you are building your website, or affiliate strategies, creativity is not a luxury. It is the engine that writes the post, frames the problem, and makes the reader feel less alone. Without it you end up with technically correct content that never earns trust, never earns subscribers, and therefore never earns commissions. The solution is not to bully yourself into producing more. The solution is to remove the small habits that keep choking the idea before it can breathe.
The quiet ways we block ourselves
Most creators do not wake up and say, “I will not create today.” It happens softer than that. When you open WordPress to write, you decide to “fix the theme” instead. You remember a voice from last week saying that long-form does better, so you convince yourself you can’t publish until it’s 2,000 words. You read five other blogs and by the time you return to yours, you can’t hear your own tone. None of those acts are evil. But together they drown the voice that had been trying to speak.
In psychology there is a phrase called “self-handicapping,” where we create obstacles so we have an excuse if we fail.² Creatively, that can look like over-researching a simple post, insisting on the perfect photo before you publish, or waiting to write until the house is quiet, which, as everyone knows, is never. The deeper fear is that if you actually publish, we will actually see you. So, your brain builds small guardrails to keep you safe and unseen. This protects you from embarrassment, but it also protects you from growth.
Perfectionism disguised as professionalism
Perfectionism is one of the prettiest forms of sabotage because it sounds like high standards. You don’t call it fear; to you it’s called excellence. You tell yourself your readers deserve your best, so you keep polishing the same paragraph over and over. The problem is that in blogging, and especially in affiliate blogging, the post that helps people the most, is the post that is published. Julia Cameron reminds artists that “creativity is a spiritual practice; it is not a race, and it is not a competition,” ³ but digital life can make us forget that. We start comparing our draft to someone else’s polished post and decide ours isn’t worthy yet.
There is a more helpful way to see it. Your blog is a living site. You can update it tomorrow. You can add better screenshots next week. Or, you can improve your internal links after you publish. But you cannot help a reader with the post that never left draft. If your article already names the problem, offers a path, links to your deeper resources, and points to your recommended tool, it is ready enough. Post it, then refine it.
Consuming instead of creating
Another subtle sabotage is starting the day with everybody else’s voice. You open social to “get inspired” and an hour later you are full of other people’s angles, other people’s formatting, other people’s success. None of it is yours. Your nervous system concludes, “This territory is crowded,” and your idea retreats. Yet most readers did not subscribe to you because you sounded like everyone else. They came because your tone was warm, your writing was literary-reflective, because you spoke to the person who has tried and failed and is tired of hype. You can only sound like that when you write before you scroll.
A simple fix is to reverse the order. Write 200 honest words on your topic first. Tell the story of the time you didn’t post for two weeks and what it did to your traffic. Tell the truth about how not capturing ideas meant you had nothing to email your MailerLite list. Then, once the words are out, go learn from others. You will receive their strategies without losing your voice.
Not capturing ideas when they come
Creative people love to say they don’t have ideas, but most of the time they have plenty of ideas that were never caught. You had a brilliant thought in the car. You had a line while washing dishes. Maybe you solved your reader’s exact problem in a DM. And because you didn’t have a single, always-open idea file, the idea evaporated. Later, when it’s time to write, you tell yourself you have nothing to say. That is sabotage by neglect.
Capturing is the gentlest productivity system in the world. Here are a few suggestions on how to capture your ideas:
- Send yourself an email with details of the idea as soon as you get one.
- Create a folder on your computer labeled “Pending Blog Ideas.” Create simple text files with the details of your idea and save them in that folder.
- Open a Notes app, Notion page, or even a draft post in WordPress called “Ideas.”
- Every time you solve a problem in real life, drop it in as a draft.
- Examples: “How I finally added a MailerLite form to my affiliate post.” “What to do when your traffic isn’t buying.” “Why you’re sabotaging your creativity.”
On content day you are not inventing from nothing. You are choosing from things your past self already noticed. That keeps your content grounded in experience, which is what your audience wants.
Rebuilding a gentle creative rhythm
Once you’ve named the ways you sabotage your creativity, you can build a kinder rhythm. Not a military schedule that punishes you when you miss a day, but a repeatable shape your brain can trust. Maybe it looks like this: Monday, write the reflective/mindset post. Tuesday, turn it into a more tactical post and link the two. Wednesday, create the Canva quote card from a paragraph. Thursday, send your list an email about it. Friday, check AIOSEO and internal links. None of that requires you to be a different person. It just requires you to do what you already do, on purpose.
Scientist and author Teresa Amabile found that people feel most creative on days when they make visible progress on meaningful work. ⁴ That means the fastest way to feel creative again is not to wait for a lightning bolt, but to create something you can point to and say, “I made that today.” A published blog post. An email. A short video using the script from your post. Progress pulls you forward. Stagnation pulls you under.
Turning ideas into assets on your site
The other reason creative sabotage is so expensive is that it doesn’t just cost you words; it costs you assets. A finished post on your website can be linked from five other posts. That same post can be pinned. Or, it can be emailed. It can contain an affiliate link. It can warm up a reader who will buy from you later. An unfinished post does none of that. When you see it this way, hitting the publish button becomes an act of stewardship. You are not just writing for writing’s sake. You are building a library your reader can walk through.
So, when you catch yourself tweaking the same line for the sixth time, ask, “Is this actually making it better, or is this keeping me safe?” When you find yourself on somebody else’s site for the third hour, ask, “Have I written my own piece yet?” When you feel that old comparison heat, ask, “Could I point my readers to my Start Here page today instead?” Redirect the impulse. Choose the supportive action. Little by little, your creative voice will trust you again.
Citations
- Gilbert, Elizabeth. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. Riverhead Books, 2015.
- Arkin, R. M., & Baumgardner, A. H. (1985). Self-Handicapping. In J. H. Harvey & G. Weary (Eds.), Attribution: Basic Issues and Applications (pp. 169-202). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
- Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way. TarcherPerigee, 1992.
- Amabile, Teresa M., and Steven J. Kramer. “The Power of Small Wins.” Harvard Business Review, May 2011.
Other related resources “Winning the War in Your Mind: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life, Groesch,
Craig, Zondervan, 2021
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