Frustrating mental blocks often happen when you’re trying to solve a tough problem, start a business, get attention for that business, or write an interesting article. But in those situations, creative thinking is crucial.

The process for achieving success boils down to changing your perspective and seeing things differently than you currently do.

People like to call this “thinking outside of the box,” but that’s the wrong way to look at it.

Just like Neo needed to understand that “there is no spoon” in the film The Matrix, you need to realize “there is no box” to step outside of.

You create your own imaginary boxes simply by living life and accepting certain things as “real” when they are just as illusory as the beliefs of a paranoid delusional.

The difference is, enough people agree that certain man-made concepts are “real,” so you’re viewed as “normal.”

This is good for society overall, but it’s that sort of unquestioning consensus that inhibits your natural creative abilities — no matter how you think creativity should be defined.

So, rather than looking for ways to inspire creativity, you should just realize the truth.

"You’re already capable of creative thinking at all times, but you have to strip away the imaginary mental blocks (or boxes) you’ve picked up along the way to wherever you are today."

A mental block prevents you from accessing your natural creative abilities. You’ll feel like you’ll never accomplish the task at hand. Instead of feeling inspired and energized, you feel drained.

Catching yourself second-guessing your decisions is one quick way to realize that you’re having a mental block. If you weren’t blocked creatively, you’d feel confident about your choices and abilities.

Mental blocks can prevent you from finishing a project — or even prevent you from starting in the first place.

A variety of circumstances can cause mental blocks, but a mental block typically occurs when you care a lot about the outcome of a situation.

Think of it this way: When you don’t care about something, there’s no reason for concern, right? If you don’t have a preference about how a finished project will look, it’s a lot easier to flow from task to task and smoothly complete each step.

However, when you do care a lot about something, such as the quality of your writing, it’s a lot easier to freeze up. When the stakes are high, you’re more likely to get blocked.

I like to keep this list of 10 common ways we suppress our natural creative abilities nearby when I get stuck. It helps me realize that the blocks in my mind are truly all in my head.

1. Trying to find the “right” answer

One of the worst aspects of formal education is the focus on the correct answer to a particular question or problem.

While this approach helps us function in society, it hurts creative thinking because real-life issues are ambiguous. There’s often more than one “correct” answer, and the second one you come up with might be better than the first.

Many of the following mental blocks can be turned around to reveal ways to find more than one answer to any given problem.

Try reframing the issue in several different ways in order to prompt different answers and embrace answering inherently ambiguous questions in several different ways.

2. Logical thinking

Not only is real life ambiguous, it’s often illogical to the point of madness.

While critical thinking skills based on logic are one of our main strengths in evaluating the feasibility of a creative idea, it’s often the enemy of truly innovative thoughts in the first place.

One of the best ways to escape the constraints of your own logical mind is to think metaphorically.

One of the reasons why metaphors work so well is that we accept them as true without thinking about it. When you realize that “truth” is often symbolic, you’ll often find that you are actually free to come up with alternatives.

3. Following rules

One way to view creative thinking is to look at it as a destructive force.

You’re tearing away the often arbitrary rules that others have set for you, and asking either “why” or “why not” whenever confronted with the way “everyone” does things.

This is easier said than done, since people will often defend the rules they follow even in the face of evidence that the rule doesn’t work.

People love to celebrate rebels like Richard Branson, but few seem brave enough to emulate him. Quit worshipping rule breakers and start breaking some rules.

4. Being practical

Like logic, practicality is super important when it comes to being successful in most fields, but it often stifles innovative ideas before they can properly blossom.

"Don’t allow the daily grint at work to interupt your inner artist."

Try not to evaluate the actual feasibility of an approach until you’ve allowed it to exist on its own for a bit.

Spend time asking “what if” as often as possible, and simply allow your imagination to go where it wants. You might just find yourself discovering a crazy idea that’s so insanely practical that no one’s thought of it before.

5. Play is not work

Allowing your mind to be at play is perhaps the most effective way to stimulate creative thinking, and yet many people disassociate play from work.

These days, the people who can come up with great ideas and solutions are the most economically rewarded, while worker bees are often employed for the benefit of the creative thinkers.

You’ve heard the expression “work hard and play hard.” All you have to realize is that they’re the same thing as a creative thinker.

6. That’s not my job

In an era of hyper-specialization, it’s those who happily explore completely unrelated areas of life and knowledge who best see that everything is related.

This goes back to what ad man Carl Ally said about creative persons — they want to be know-it-alls.

Sure, you’ve got to know the specialized stuff in your field, but if you view yourself as an explorer rather than a highly specialized cog in the machine, you’ll run circles around the technical master in the success department.

7. Being a “serious” person

Most of what keeps us civilized boils down to conformity, consistency, shared values, and yes, thinking about things the same way everyone else does.

There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily. But if you can mentally accept that it’s actually nothing more than groupthink that helps a society function, you can then give yourself permission to turn everything that’s accepted upside down and shake out the illusions.

Leaders from Egyptian pharaohs to Chinese emperors and European royalty have consulted with fools, or court jesters, when faced with tough problems.

The persona of the fool allowed the truth to be told, without the usual ramifications that might come with speaking blasphemy, being naive, or challenging ingrained social conventions.

Give yourself permission to remove this mental block, be a fool, and see things for what they really are.

8. Avoiding ambiguity

We rationally realize that most every situation is ambiguous to some degree.

And although dividing complex situations into black and white boxes can lead to disaster, we still do it.

It’s an innate characteristic of human psychology to desire certainty, but it’s the creative thinker who rejects the false comfort of clarity when it’s not really appropriate.

"Ambiguity is your friend if you’re looking to innovate."

The fact that most people are uncomfortable exploring uncertainty gives you an advantage, as long as you can embrace ambiguity rather than run from it.

9. Being wrong is bad

We hate being wrong, and yet mistakes often teach us the most.

Thomas Edison was wrong over 1,000 times before getting the light bulb right. Edison’s greatest strength was that he was not afraid to be wrong.

"The best thing we do is learn from our mistakes, but we have to free ourselves to make mistakes in the first place."

Just try out your ideas and see what happens, take what you learn, and try something else.

Ask yourself, what’s the worst that can happen if I’m wrong?

You’ll often find the benefits of being wrong greatly outweigh the ramifications.

10. I’m not creative

Denying your own creativity is like denying you’re a human being.

We’re all limitlessly creative, but only to the extent that we realize that we create our own limits with the way we think. If you tell yourself you’re not creative, it becomes true. Stop that mental block.

In that sense, awakening your own creativity is similar to the path reported by those who seek spiritual enlightenment.

"You’re already enlightened, just like you’re already creative, but you have to strip away all of your delusions before you can see it."

Acknowledge that you’re inherently creative, and then start tearing down the other barriers you’ve allowed to be created in your mind.

As always, I'll see you in class.