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Solve anything with Dr. Mark: Career advice for the working class; Creating ads causing major problems

By Dr. Mark Goulston, Source: Tribune Media Services

Q: Maybe I'm not cut out for creating ads. Rather than becoming easier it's only becoming more difficult. Yet despite my fears, I always somehow manage to pull it off at the last minute and more than satisfy my boss. It's making me a wreck, not to mention the havoc it wreaks on my family who can't get through to me when I get stuck. Any suggestions for smoothing out this roller coaster?

A: You remind me of an ad man I worked with in psychotherapy who had a very similar problem. He was blocked. Insight didn't penetrate. Compassion made him regress. Nothing seemed to get through. When his staying stuck crossed over to my feeling blocked I acted out a tad —

 	with something

referred to in my trade as "countertransference." This is usually a "no-no," but on this occasion it worked.

I know very little about writing ads, but nevertheless I started to suggest catchy ones that he might try. He became incensed with me and barked: "You're a shrink, who the hell do you think you are, telling me what ads I should write?"

I snapped back: "A shrink sure beats a dead-in-the-water ad man who right now can't pull an idea out of thin air or from somewhere else in his anatomy. C'mon," I finally said, "what have you got to lose?" Apparently he had a lot to lose with regard to the insult to his self-esteem triggered by my non-professional intervention. By the next session he had overcome his block. The resulting ad campaign he came up with was the best received of his career.

This guy apparently needed a shock to the system. This may be the case with you. There are other ways to accomplish this other than having a psychotherapist do something as preposterous as what I had done.

Look at creativity from this perspective. When it's working and you are on a roll, your feelings (emotional and physical) seamlessly blend with your actions (what ads you create). You feel at one with your talent and the world. You're unblocked, your ads appear to write themselves and all you have to do is stay out of your talent's way. You're in the zone.

But when you're blocked, everything feels forced and false. The more you push, the worse it gets. Ad copy becomes crappy copy. Flow stalls to a halt. Instead of being at one with the universe, you feel disconnected from it and yourself. To make matters worse, your mind enters the picture feebly attempting to get you back on track. The more you think and obsess, the further away it takes you from your creativity.

What can you do to jumpstart your dead battery? First, if your mind IS making the situation worse, stop thinking. Come up with activities that have a high chance of generating feelings, emotions, and more activity. When you can't create (which is not being able to convert feelings into action), take any definitive action and you'll often discover how it will trigger feelings.

One of the best activities when you're stuck artistically is to refocus your efforts interacting with, being supportive of and there for your family. Families of a creative person often have a terrible time because they feel they can't interrupt him when he's on a creative roll and can't cheer him up when he's stuck. If you can break your self-absorption during these blocked times and emotionally interact with your family, you will often feel buoyed up for having turned self-absorption and self-pity into interacting with and caring for others.

And guess what? Your graciousness under pressure may restore your creative juices, because you'll feel more deserving for doing more with your family than merely doing something for them. If worse comes to worse, maybe you should find a therapist who will compete with you in coming up with an ad when you are blocked, just to tick you off and shock you back into your creativity.

XXXX

Mark Goulston, M.D., is a Santa Monica-based business psychiatrist, executive coach and author of "Get Out of Your Own Way at Work." Question him at mgoulston@markgoulston.com. Visit him at: www.markgoulston.com

© 2008, Tribune Media Services