My creativity needs protecting

We're surrounded by noise designed to elicit an emotional response from us.

More often than not, that emotional charge is felt as stress.

I'm talking about the doom-scrolling political takes, the AI apocalypse predictions, the economic collapse warnings, and the rage-bait arguments in every comment section.

It seeps in even when we're not looking for it, and it accumulates in the body as tension, distraction, and a fog that saps our focus.

When I slip into the habit of opening my senses to all of this slop, I start to feel drained before I’ve had a chance to create progress in my day.

My creativity suffers most when I let this stuff pile up. The ideas stop flowing, and my creative output feels forced. I sit down to work, and my mind is elsewhere, chewing on things I can't control.

That’s silly, when there is an alternative.

What's helped me most is understanding that stress doesn't come from my circumstances. It comes from my thoughts about circumstances. The news isn't stressful. My thinking about the news is.

When I absorb this idea, the grip loosens. I see my thoughts doing what they do rather than allowing my thoughts to become my emotional experience.

My thoughts stop spiralling. The overwhelm fades.

This is the cure to stress.

I can let the thoughts pass, return to the work, and allow my creativity to return.

I write about this understanding in my Untethered Mind course.

Alex