Mindful minutes: Breaking through creative obstacles and resistance with Mindfulness

Ever hit a wall when your creative juices feel like they've run dry? I certainly have, and in this year's inaugural Mindful Minute episode, I'm peeling back the curtain on my own struggles with creative blocks. We've all been there—whether it's a project, personal life, or even just a daily routine that's lost its luster. I'm Deny Caballero, and in this Mindful Minutes segment, I'm here to share the transformative power of stepping back and embracing mindfulness to reignite that spark of creativity and push past the mental barricades.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Welcome back to another great Mindful Minute segment. As always, I'm your host, danny Caviero. It's been a minute, I've been a little preoccupied, but now I'm back for the first Mindful Minute segment of 2024. I couldn't think of a better topic to talk about today than what to do when you're stuck creatively or just stuck in general. Now, I mostly mean this in regards to working on a project. Now, I think we've all been there.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Whether you're a civilian or active duty service member or a veteran, all of us can identify a period in time where we've been working on something and then, out of nowhere, we're met with resistance, like we're up against a wall. We can't write, we can't finish the project and intuitively, we tell ourselves to just keep pushing, to continue pushing against this resistance, continue pushing against the wall. But the harder we try, the more we try to just force our way through this, the greater that resistance becomes. Now, in the past, I have been that stubborn individual that just kept going, and what happened to me was, specifically when I was writing something, it would become really, really horrible. To put it in plain English, it would be like the first three pages or four pages would be great content and then the rest would just be kind of like mid to really bad, and then the errors would pile up and you just plug it along and you're forcing it, you're forcing it, you're trying to make it happen, but it's not flowing authentically. Now, intuitively, looking back, something told me to walk away, go for a walk, go, work out. But I never listened to it. Now, years later, after understanding the importance of being present, I realized in those moments of being stuck, of feeling like I was creatively blocked, I was dealing with a whole different problem. The moment that block came in, I was starting to get stressed and then I would start to worry about things and start projecting into the future, start stressing and worrying, which only made the problem worse. So what can we do when we are dealing with that resistance? Of course it's mindfulness.

Speaker 1: 3:22

Come on, it's a mindful minute segment. So today I'm going to talk about what you can do to get unstuck, specifically what you can do with mindfulness. Now, the first thing that I'm going to recommend is just doing a mindful awareness of breath exercise. Now, if you're new to mindfulness, this can be tricky. This can feel impossible, because when we're new to mindfulness just being aware and being present with our breath for even five minutes can seem impossible, but that's where I want you to start. We're going to walk away from the project and we're just going to sit somewhere peaceful and calm and we're just going to do a breathing exercise.

Speaker 1: 4:09

Now, the way we do it in mindfulness, it's not just sitting down and breathing. No, I want you to sit somewhere, relax. I want you to focus on breathing, inhale and in through your nose. So something like this If you're driving and listening to this, please just follow along, but don't close your eyes. So we're going to inhale through our nose and then exhale through our mouth. Just take that first settling breath, settling into this practice, as I like to say and then, for the next five or ten minutes, you're going to gently just close your eyes and just breathe, breathing on that in breath, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth, inhaling in and back out through your mouth. Now, as you bring your awareness to your breath, your mind is going to wander and that's where you need to remember that mindfulness isn't about just having a blank mind and not being pulled one way or the other, but it's that muscle memory of redirecting your focus back to the breath and again, start off with five minutes, work up to ten minutes, twelve minutes, but understand that in that redirection, in the bringing the mind back to the breath, that's where mindfulness is occurring. You're being aware that your mind is pulling you here, pulling you there. Just steer it back. So that's exercise one Next exercise is a little difficult, we'll take a little bit of work, but it's mindful walking.

Speaker 1: 6:07

Now, mindful walking is not just going to a nice path and just walking. Now you're being completely present in each step and I mean that You're literally slowly bringing your awareness, that step, lifting your foot, placing your foot, the shifting of your weight from foot to foot, and it's that intricate. It's that present moment awareness of lifting your foot, placing your foot over and over and over again. You're not worried about the flowers, you're not cueing in on everything else that's going around you. You're simply focusing on taking those steps, one step forward, and then the transition where the back foot lifts back up. Now and now it's moving forward, very small minute steps, and what you realize is, when you're practicing mindful walking, you'll bring your awareness to all these intricate small steps that make taking a step possible and that helps you cultivate that present moment awareness that so many of us are lacking, and you can notice it immediately after just doing one iteration of mindful walking. At the same time, you're still focused on that breath, you're still focused on staying present, and when your mind shifts, what do you do? You bring it back to what you're doing, with just mindful walking.

Speaker 1: 7:50

Now the last, one, last exercise that I want to talk about that will help you break free of that resistance. It's a self-compassion break. Now this is the one that will get a lot of pushback, because we're not really good at self-compassion. We're good at self-esteem and we're constantly talking about having high self-esteem, but, like Dr Kristin Neff talks about in her book about self-compassion is, when everything goes wrong, self-esteem isn't there to pick us back up. We're ill-equipped if we were only relying on self-esteem. Self-compassion, on the other hand, says, hey, we failed or something is wrong, and it's okay, we're going to do this again, we're going to do great things. We failed, we're going to get back up, we're going to succeed again. That's self-compassion, and it's far better to cultivate self-compassion and utilize it on a daily basis than just relying on self-esteem. So that's why this is our number three exercise that will help us break through that resistance.

Speaker 1: 9:00

That self-compassion is based on three principles you have the mindfulness aspect, you have the kindness and then you have the common humanity aspect of it. Those three things is what builds our self-compassion. So the first thing we want to do is tap into that mindfulness. Now, with resistance, like I mentioned before, that feeling that you're meeting an obstacle and you can't meet or finish your project, that's going to bring feelings of stress, of uncertainty. Put on that mindful observer hat and figure out what it's bringing to you, what are the emotions behind it, what are you feeling in that moment? I'm stressed out because this project is due. Oh, okay, that's that mindful observer piece. So that's the first thing we're going to do for this self-compassion exercise. We identify what we're dealing with and for this example, I'm stressed because this project is due. So I'm going to say that I'm going to verbally acknowledge I am stressed because this project is due. That's what I'm feeling. And number two, we're going to engage in that common humanity. I'm going to acknowledge that suffering and stress, this is a part of life and I am not alone in this struggle. Other people have dealt with this before. And finally, the last part, number three, that's the kindness part.

Speaker 1: 10:47

There's a little difficult for a lot of people, because it's easy for us to accept kindness from somebody else. It's not so easy to accept it from ourselves. To this aspect of Of the self-compassion break means being able to soothe yourself. So that's either just Making contact with your body and try it, be willing to go into the unknown. You never know this before. So I'm telling you, just try it, place right on your chest and just give yourself that kindness and understand like it's okay. This may be difficult but I'm going to get through this and acknowledge that.

Speaker 1: 11:26

And those are the three components that self-compassion break. So literally just taking a break throughout your day and being able to Understand what you're going through, the mindfulness, engage in that common humanity, to look at how stressful or half angry you are with this Moment of resistance and say, hey, you know what. This is a moment of suffering, and suffering is Part of human life. I am connected to other people that have gone through the same thing, but this moment will dissipate. I will get through this. And lastly, most important part of this self-compassion break is to embrace Yourself, to let yourself know that it's gonna be okay. Yeah, this project is do. This report is do, or this book that I'm working on, or the story that I'm writing, or this painting that I'm doing. It will get done and it's going to be okay. That's it To make time today.

Speaker 1: 12:28

If you're going through resistance, if you're dealing with something difficult, you can't finish it. Walk away. Do a mindfulness break, mindful breathing, awareness of breath, maybe. Do a mindful walk. Most importantly, though, take a moment and practice self-compassion. I'm Danny Caballero. Thank you for listening today, and I hope that you make mindfulness part of your daily life, because I know it can help you. It's made an impact in my life and if you're curious or would like to know more, hit me up. You can always reach me out on, or reach me at LinkedIn at Danny Caballero, or hit me up on my Gmail SecHaltPodcast at gmailcom. I'm always happy to bring out some mindfulness and I help coach anybody that's willing to learn, so please take care of yourself when we see you all next time. You.