An important part of garden care is weeding. Weeds are continually popping up. If you spend a little time every day, you can keep them under control; if you ignore them, pretty soon they will have taken over your garden!
The real problem with weeds is not that they are coexisting peacefully in your garden, but that they are stealing nutrients, crowding out your plants, and eventually stunting their growth. Your plants cannot produce a bountiful harvest under these conditions.
It's an easy matter to remove weeds when they are small, before their root systems are established -- a simple pluck and they're gone. You can even put them on the compost pile, so long as they're not blooming, and get those nutrients back.
In your creative garden, the weeds that pop up are those negative thoughts that start taking over, stealing nutrients, and crowding your creative projects out of your life with uncertainty and doubt.
If you get a chance at these thoughts when they're new and not yet established, they are easier to remove.
Problem is, a lot of these weedy thoughts have been growing with us our whole lives, and they've got pretty big root systems! Like with a weed, we may have whacked off the top part many times over the years, only to see them grow back from the roots. Don't be discouraged that it takes awhile to get rid of them.
Your best tool for making progress in this area is cultivating an awareness of these thoughts, and understanding that they are not reality. Be gentle with yourself in your thoughts in everything, including frustrations you have getting rid of negative thoughts!
There are several ways to try dealing with negative thoughts. One way to work with them is to spend a few minutes each day visualizing these weedy thoughts, and pulling them up. Maybe you see the words as part of the weed, maybe you hear the thought in your head. Either way, work with this process, and see if it is helpful.
Another technique is meditation. Your mind may naturally go to those negative thoughts, and you can gently steer it back to your breath. This is a way of disempowering those thoughts.
You can also try affirmations. Make sure you select a phrase that you can absolutely believe in. Don't use an affirmation that you are an award-winning writer if you can barely imagine finishing a short story. Create a phrase that you can fully commit to, such as: I am becoming a short story writer. Also, be sure to state your affirmations in the positive. "I'm becoming a less horrible writer" is not going to inspire!
It takes time and consistent action to change negative thoughts and the beliefs behind them. They're very tenacious.
Rather than trying to get rid of negative thoughts, another useful perspective is to just notice them, without trying to change them, and then go on about your creative work. This is what is recommended by Richard Carson in his book Taming Your Gremlin. You might enjoy reading the book to get a different point of view.
Or, you can use a combination of noticing and continuing, while still working with some of the other techniques. This allows you to be able to move forward on your creative project, while also offering the opportunity for long term thought change.
Another technique that works is to use physical exercise to simply create a feeling of empowerment that makes it difficult for negative thoughts to speak up. Use that time when you are still feeling up from the exercise to work on your creative project.
A few words of warning: Don't wait until these negative thoughts are gone to begin creating! And don't allow the focus of your time and energy to become getting rid of negative thoughts! These are both traps that will prevent you from creating, and they're traps you can be in for a very long time! The truth is that no matter how hard you work at it, some negative thoughts may not ever shift. At that point, noticing and moving ahead anyway may be your best option.
Remember that negative thinking is partly a habit you engage in at the present time, and partly a set of very old beliefs that you've carried around for years. Changing how you think in the present will help, but some of those old thoughts take time and persistence to minimize or eliminate. Be patient and persistent!
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