Last night I spoke to a client who was convinced she had writer’s block. Have you ever had that?  I ask because many of you who read this are also writers, even if it’s just a journal.  You suddenly lose interest in putting words on the page, or, more likely, you just aren’t happy with what you’re writing.  There are a lot of theories on what writer’s block is and how to overcome it, and a lot of busy work can go into researching it.  But I think it’s just like anything else: the remedy is the most simple answer.  Recognize the block itself as a signal to you from the Universe in answer to something you’ve been asking lately.  Break down the elements of the block and you’ll find it’s not a block at all, it’s a billboard with your answer.  It’s your inner guidance talking to you.

But you probably don’t recognize it as inner guidance.  You may be so convinced they are your own thoughts, you keep pushing them to the back, waiting for a big beam of light to shine some angel down from the sky to talk to you like they do in the movies.  That’s not how it happens.  Well, ok, sometimes it does, but more often, you will receive thoughts and impressions that you may mistake as your own thoughts, rather than considering them a symbol for your contemplation as inner guidance.

How can you tell the difference between your own thoughts and true inner guidance?  By making time each day to sit and meditate or otherwise bring your mind to stillness on a regular basis. That will begin to skim the surface thoughts away, the same as clearing your computer cache of temporary files.  You don’t need to drag that old, outdated, temporary information into each new thought session.

Meditation on a regular basis will train your mind to discern between helpful and trivial thoughts as they appear.  When you cultivate a mind that is able to focus undisturbed, there are less layers, less filters between the message inner guidance is sending you, and how you receive it.  You’ll be able to more easily tell which thoughts are yours, and which come from inner guidance.

So, when you get writer’s block, how does it show up for you?  For my friend, it was as a complete blank when she sat to write.  It didn’t even interest her enough to put pen to page.  She said she felt like she was in suspended animation.  She just wanted to sit.  I thought that in itself was a powerful signal.

The difference in feeling overwhelmed into inertia and the brain wave condition known as the alpha wave state is your perception of what you are experiencing.  If you feel mindless, maybe you’re supposed to be mindless for a little awhile, long enough to gain some balance and perspective.

Exercise the power of your will to make yourself write about this “writer’s block” you feel you are experiencing.  How can you tell you’re blocked?  What has changed between the last time you were in a passionate writing mode, and now?  What thoughts are predominant in your mind, right here, today?

Forget about your writing project.  Instead write exactly how you feel about being blocked, all the thoughts and feeling that come to you.  No one will read this but you.  Describe how the block shows up, what it feels like, how you feel it constricts or confines you, what you feel would release you.

That writing counts as skimming the shallow surface thoughts away, wiping clean that cache of old info, much of which may not be relevant after you’ve done this exercise a few times.

So if you think you’ve got a block, look again.  It could be a billboard pointing you in the direction of your wildest dreams.  It could happen.

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