Feeling frustrated with a project-in-progress or a masterpiece-in-waiting? Looking for a creative spark in all the wrong places? Wondering where your fresh ideas and thoughts went? Take out the card with the artist beret on it and step fully into the artist studio of your imagination. Are your tools ready? Can you sense your muse? Is inspiration sparkling around you? If not, . your artist within might be blocked by some of these typical creativity-stopping mindsets:

• Believing there is only one right answer or interpretation
• Trying to imitate the work of others instead of creating your own genre
• Waiting for inspiration instead of showing up at the canvas and seeing what happens
• Thinking that you have nothing new to offer instead of knowing that there is uniqueness in what you are doing and trying to come from that place
• Not wanting to act the part of artist -- quirky, a little off-center or downright wacky
• Believing that what you do can't benefit from an artists touch instead of making everything you do a unique masterpiece

• When you stop pushing so hard what do you see?
• What is calling you forth?
• What is your signature style? What makes your work recognizably yours?
• What would it take for you to revel in creating your own genre?
• Imagine that you have a sponsor or patron has commissioned a work and the only requirement for the work is that it is a true original, unlike anything that has been created before. What stands in the way?
• What if the inspiration only came when the brush touched the canvas?
• Being an artist doesn't revolve around selling and displaying the end product, it is about learning the fundamental techniques that deepen and hone the craft. What are you doing to continue to hone your craft?
• Where are you looking for possibility?

Flow or being in the zone is that optimal performance state that is typified by losing track of time, keen concentration and absorption in the task at hand. Artists, performers, athletes and successful people all strive for this state where peak performance can occur. Instead of chasing happiness, see what happens if you seek to get in the flow or zone.

1. Stop trying to make progress on all fronts at all times. Concentrate on one important task or canvas at a time
2. Have a clear objective for the task in front of you. Know what "done" looks like.
3. Set up the task so that you get immediate feedback as you work. This is only possible once you have a clear sense of "done."
4. Work on things that are appropriately challenging. It is impossible to be in "flow" when a task is too easy, too daunting or the wrong fit.
5. Accomplish the task using your strengths instead of your weaknesses. Subtle sabotage happens when we try and accomplish a task like we think someone else want us to or like we "should."
6. Approach the task with a perspective that allows you to more easily accomplish the above steps. Use your One Hat At A Time deck and choose the hat that would help you engage more quickly and easily.

• Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. Pablo Picasso
• What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us. Ralph Waldo Emerson